Lila Sciences, the Cambridge-based biotech innovator, has closed a $235 million Series A round, catapulting the AI-first startup to unicorn status with a $1.23 billion valuation. Building on its March emergence from stealth with a $200 million seed financing, Lila is on a quest to revolutionize drug discovery and materials science by deploying “AI science factories”—fully autonomous laboratories that blend generative artificial intelligence with robotic experimentation.
In today’s funding round led by Collective Global and Braidwell, Lila will expand its integrated platform, which empowers AI to formulate hypotheses, design experiments, and execute thousands of lab processes in parallel. The result: research timelines that once took years now shrink to mere months or weeks. CEO Geoffrey von Maltzahn emphasizes that combining proprietary lab data with advanced machine learning breaks through “public-data ceilings,” enabling discoveries beyond the reach of traditional methods.
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Since founding in 2023, Lila’s autonomous labs have already yielded thousands of novel proteins, nucleic acids, chemistries, and materials. Highlights include non–platinum-group catalysts for greener hydrogen production and next-generation genetic medicine constructs that outperform commercial therapies. The company’s scientific brain trust is anchored by Harvard geneticist George Church as chief scientist, with Flagship Pioneering among its early backers and new participation from General Catalyst, ARK Venture Fund, and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
As Lila prepares to onboard select external partners by year-end, its rise underscores growing investor confidence in AI-driven life-science innovation. “Their platform is an exceptional IP-manufacturing engine,” says Collective co-CEO Daniel Adamson. With competitors like Orbital Materials and Isomorphic Labs in the fray, Lila’s rapid ascent marks a turning point in how breakthrough therapeutics and materials are conceived, tested, and scaled.
