Xaira Therapeutics

What Xaira Therapeutics does

Xaira Therapeutics is an AI-native biotechnology company founded in 2023 and publicly launched in April 2024 with a $1.0 billion Series A led by ARCH Venture Partners — the largest debut venture financing in the AI drug discovery sector. Co-founded and incubated by ARCH and Foresite Labs, the company is led by Chairman & CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne (formerly EVP/CSO at Genentech and President of Stanford) and co-founder/CTO Hetu Kamichetty (formerly of Meta and the David Baker lab). The company is headquartered in South San Francisco with additional offices in Seattle and London, and employs 101–250 people spanning AI, protein design, functional genomics, and drug development.

Xaira's platform integrates three interlocking pillars: advanced AI research, large-scale data generation, and therapeutic product development. The computational core builds on Nobel Laureate David Baker's RFdiffusion and RFantibody methods for de novo protein and antibody design, extended by Xaira. Xaira's first virtual cell model, X-Cell, is a proprietary 4.9-billion-parameter diffusion language architecture (launched March 2026) trained on X-Atlas/Pisces — the largest genome-wide Perturb-seq dataset ever reported. X-Atlas/Orion, the largest publicly available Perturb-seq dataset, was released in June 2025 to seed ecosystem adoption. The Scientific Advisory Board includes three Nobel Laureates (Baker, Bertozzi, MacKinnon), and senior leadership is drawn from Genentech, Roche, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Meta, and Stanford.

Xaira is pre-commercial and pre-revenue; its forward revenue model is expected to rely on biopharma R&D collaborations, platform partnerships, milestone payments, and royalties on internally developed therapeutics and AI models. Go-to-market is sales-led, targeting large pharmaceutical partners for enterprise collaborations through a dedicated business-development function led by SVP Rachel Lane (formerly CBO of Belharra, with prior platform deals with Genentech and Sanofi). The company is also building an internal therapeutic pipeline across multiple modalities. Investors include ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, NEA, F-Prime, Two Sigma Ventures (now Deviation Capital), ICONIQ Capital, and Sahsen Ventures; PitchBook profiles Xaira among seven AI-driven biotech unicorns valued between $1.7B and $2.7B and identifies it as a likely IPO candidate.

Name

Xaira Therapeutics

Legal name

Xaira Therapeutics, Inc.

Website

https://xaira.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2023

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

101–250 employees

Short description

Xaira Therapeutics is an AI-native biotechnology company developing foundation models — including a 4.9B-parameter virtual cell model (X-Cell) and large-scale Perturb-seq datasets — to enable de novo protein and antibody design for large pharmaceutical partners and its own internal therapeutic pipeline.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

AI Drug Discovery Platform

NAICS

Research and Development in Biotechnology (except Nanobiotechnology) (541714)

akta.pro primary industry

AI/ML Platforms for Drug Discovery & Experiment Optimization (HLAGAJAO)

Keywords

• AI drug discovery
• Computational biology
• De novo protein design
• Foundation models
• Therapeutic pipeline

Headquarters

HQ city

South San Francisco

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices3 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Pre-revenue / R&D-stage biotech: Xaira is a pre-commercial, privately held AI-native biotech whose operations are currently funded by venture capital. Forward-looking revenue model is expected to rely on biopharma R&D partnerships, platform collaborations, milestone payments, and potential royalties or licensing on internally developed therapeutics and AI models, but no product revenues or licensing income are disclosed at this stage.

Go-to-market motion2 records

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Xaira Therapeutics is an integrated AI-native biotechnology company that develops foundation models and large-scale biological datasets to power AI-driven drug discovery. Its core platform spans advanced AI research (anchored on co-founder Nobel Laureate David Baker's de novo protein/antibody design methods), expansive data generation through the proprietary X-Atlas/Pisces and publicly available X-Atlas/Orion Perturb-seq datasets, and the proprietary X-Cell virtual cell model (4.9 billion parameters). These computational capabilities are applied internally to build a multi-modality therapeutic product pipeline and externally offered to large pharmaceutical partners for R&D collaborations, platform access, and co-development.

Product overview

Xaira Therapeutics operates as a single integrated AI-native biotechnology platform — not a multi-product SaaS suite — built on three interlocking pillars: (1) advanced AI research anchored on co-founder Nobel Laureate David Baker's foundational protein-design models (RFdiffusion/RFantibody), (2) expansive proprietary data generation through large-scale Perturb-seq datasets (X-Atlas/Orion and X-Atlas/Pisces) that feed its virtual cell model, and (3) robust therapeutic product development. The core platform artifact is the X-Cell virtual cell model (a 4.9B-parameter diffusion language architecture) which the data assets train and which in turn powers the company's internal therapeutic pipeline across multiple modalities.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• X-Cell: Xaira Therapeutics' first virtual cell model, trained on the X-Atlas/Pisces dataset, designed to predict cellular responses to genetic perturbations.
• X-Atlas/Pisces
• X-Atlas/Orion

Products and services

• X-Cell virtual cell model Xaira's first virtual cell model, a diffusion-language architecture with 4.9 billion parameters trained on the X-Atlas/Pisces genome-wide perturbation dataset. It is designed to predict cellular responses to genetic perturbations and advance AI-driven drug discovery, marking a step toward transforming drug discovery from a trial-and-error process into a predictive engineering discipline.
• X-Atlas/Orion Perturb-seq dataset The largest publicly available genome-wide Perturb-seq dataset, released by Xaira Therapeutics in June 2025 to power next-generation AI for biology. It is produced via a scalable fix-cryopreserve platform for training dose-dependent biological foundation models.
• X-Atlas/Pisces perturbation dataset The largest genome-wide perturbation (CRISPRi Perturb-seq) dataset ever reported, used to train the X-Cell virtual cell model and power next-generation AI for biology.

Quantifiable outcome

• Largest debut venture financing in the AI drug discovery sector at $1.0B+
• +4 more outcomes

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability8 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Six partnerships are on record, tiered flagship co-founder and investor, flagship research partner / scientific foundation, strategic pharma counterparty, strategic ecosystem partner, research affiliation and event partnership for recruiting.

• Foresite Labs / Foresite Capitalflagship co-founder and investorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCo-founded and incubated Xaira through Foresite Labs; Foresite Capital (~$3.5B AUM) is an investor in Xaira. Foresite Capital founder & CEO Jim Tananbaum is a Board Observer at Xaira; Foresite Capital Managing Director Vik Bajaj is a Director and co-founder.
• University of Washington Institute for Protein Design (David Baker lab)flagship research partner / scientific foundationStrategic or Co-development PartnerNobel Laureate David Baker is co-founder of Xaira and a Scientific Advisor. Xaira's computational core is built on the Baker lab's foundational work (RFdiffusion, RFantibody) for designing proteins and antibodies from scratch; the relationship provides a continuous pipeline of methods and IP from the lab.
• Sanofistrategic pharma counterpartyStrategic or Co-development PartnerSanofi hired Xaira's founding Chief Medical Officer Paulo Fontoura as its new EVP and Global Head of R&D effective September 1, 2026 — a high-profile talent flow between the two companies. Sanofi is also referenced in industry coverage as a potential AI/biotech counterparty and is linked to Xaira in lung-cancer AI therapeutics deal-flow reporting.
• Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (Parker Foundation)strategic ecosystem partnerStrategic or Co-development PartnerParker Institute founder Sean Parker is a Board Observer at Xaira, connecting Xaira to PICI's immunotherapy research and clinical network.
• Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI)research affiliationStrategic or Co-development PartnerCo-founders David Baker and Carolyn Bertozzi are HHMI investigators, providing scientific continuity with HHMI's broader investigator network.
• NeurIPS 2025 Conferenceevent partnership for recruitingGTM or Marketing PartnerXaira participated in NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego to engage with AI research talent, review applications, and build scientific visibility within the ML community.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Isomorphic Labs: Alphabet/DeepMind's commercial drug discovery spinout building AI foundation models for biology with pharma partnerships (Novartis, Eli Lilly). Closest well-capitalized peer competing for the same enterprise pharma platform-partnership economics Xaira targets.
• Insitro: AI-native drug discovery company combining machine learning with high-throughput biology and functional genomics. Direct peer to Xaira in building end-to-end AI platforms for therapeutic discovery, and a comparable target for pharma partnerships and large-scale data generation.
• Absci: AI generative biology company combining zero-shot generative AI models with high-throughput wet-lab validation for antibody and protein design. Direct competitor in AI-designed biologics, with public-market visibility and similar pharma-partnership GTM.
• Recursion Pharmaceuticals: AI-driven biotech using high-throughput experimental biology and foundation models to discover therapeutics; completed the acquisition of Exscientia in 2024. Most direct comparable as a publicly listed AI-native biotech with a similar platform-plus-pipeline model and similar target customer (large pharma).
• Generate Biomedicines: AI-first generative biology company designing novel proteins and antibodies de novo. Directly competes in the generative protein/antibody design space that Xaira's RFdiffusion/RFantibody-based platform also targets, with similar pharma-partnership GTM.

Emerging players

• EvolutionaryScale: AI research company building frontier biological foundation models (ESM family) for protein design. Directly comparable in protein language model architecture, though earlier-stage and more research-oriented than Xaira's full-stack biotech positioning.
• Owkin: AI biotech applying foundation models to biology and clinical data with pharma partnerships (e.g., Sanofi). Comparable AI-biotech GTM and pharma-partnership model, though focused more on clinical/translational than discovery-stage AI.
• Iambic: AI-native drug discovery company combining foundation models with physics-based simulation to design novel therapeutics. Comparable early-stage AI biotech pursuing pharma partnerships and internal pipeline development.
• Genesis Therapeutics: AI-native biotech building foundation models for molecular generation and target identification. Comparable early-stage AI drug-discovery peer pursuing similar target customer (pharma partners) and similar modality mix (small molecules and biologics).
• Cradle Bio: AI protein design company enabling biotech partners to engineer novel proteins. Overlaps with Xaira's de novo antibody/protein design capabilities but with a different delivery model (software platform vs. integrated biotech).

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat6 records

Key risks7 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/Xaira_Thera
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/xaira-therapeutics

Compliance3 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles23 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors13 records

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M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Xaira Therapeutics