Manohar Paluri, who spent 14 years at Meta and rose to vice president of AI, has left to co-found Warp Sciences, a drug-discovery startup that has raised $215 million, India Today reported on Oct. 28. He’s the company’s chief technology officer.
Warp Sciences came out of stealth on Oct. 22. TechCrunch’s Marina Temkin reported that day that the startup was launched by Kevin Weil, a former science lead at OpenAI, and that the $215 million round values it at $865 million, according to Weil’s announcement on X.
Lightspeed led the round, with IVP, Mayfield, Lux Capital, Premji Invest and Menlo Ventures also taking part, TechCrunch reported.
What the company does
Warp Sciences wants to automate wet-lab chemistry, the hands-on work of making and testing molecules. Its announcement on BusinessWire describes the business as building U.S. chemistry services for drug research, combining chemists with AI and robotics.
That work is often sent overseas now. TechCrunch reported that biotech companies have for years outsourced the labor-heavy job of synthesizing thousands of variations of a molecule to contractors in China, such as WuXi AppTec. Weil wants to bring that work back to the U.S. and reduce the drug-development pipeline’s exposure to geopolitical supply-chain risk, according to TechCrunch.
The training method is hands-on. Human chemists wearing cameras and sensor gloves will teach robots to do lab tasks, TechCrunch reported, with the goal of running experiments around the clock.
India Today framed it as a different kind of problem for Paluri’s AI background. Drug discovery involves long rounds of experiments, testing and analysis, the outlet noted, and AI systems could help researchers sort through options faster while robots handle parts of the lab work.
Paluri’s path
Paluri earned a computer science degree from the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad in 2006, India Today reported. He began at Sarnoff, working on computer vision projects such as object tracking and video analysis.
He then moved to the U.S. for graduate study at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he focused on computer vision and robotics. He also did research stints at IBM and at Google, where he worked as an intern on 3D mapping, according to India Today.
He joined Facebook, now Meta, as a computer vision researcher in 2012. India Today reported that he became director of AI in 2015, senior director in 2021 and vice president in 2024, in work that connected research with products across Meta’s apps.
The move fits a wider pattern this month of senior AI staff leaving big labs for startups. Meta AI director Rohit Patel left on Oct. 27 to start Ndoc, TechCrunch reported.
Neither Warp Sciences nor Paluri has said publicly when the company’s first robotic lab will open or which drug companies have signed on as customers. India Today described the funding as “reportedly” $215 million. That’s the same amount Warp Sciences gave in its own announcement.
Source: India Today, “IIIT Hyderabad alumnus Manohar Paluri launches Warp Sciences with $215 million in funding”
Additional sources: TechCrunch, Marina Temkin, “Former OpenAI science lead launches Warp Science to automate wet labs with robots”; BusinessWire, Warp Sciences, “Warp Sciences Emerges From Stealth With $215 Million to Build U.S. Chemistry Services for Drug Research”
