OpenAI buys Orchestra Bio, putting AI agents on drug development’s critical path 🧪

OpenAI has acquired San Francisco startup Orchestra Bio, the ChatGPT maker announced Tuesday, with the startup’s team and AI-agent platform set to be folded into Rosalind, OpenAI’s family of models and tools for biologists and chemists. The financial terms were not disclosed. Orchestra’s agents help drug companies keep sprawling development programs on schedule by watching tasks, flagging problems, identifying activities and deadlines at risk, gathering relevant information and comparing possible responses; scientists and program leaders make the final call. “Our goal is to help scientists make discoveries and manage the work needed to turn them into treatments that reach patients sooner,” OpenAI said in the announcement.

OpenAI says developing a new medicine from the first idea to U.S. approval can take up to 15 years, with every month shaved from that timeline bringing a treatment to patients and cash to the company one month sooner. Bringing one approved drug to market can cost more than $2.6 billion, and fewer than 10% of candidates that enter human testing ever make it to pharmacy shelves. Drug teams must also coordinate internal departments and outside partners, including contract research organizations, outside labs hired to run studies and contract manufacturers that produce the experimental drug, often while relying on systems that do not talk to each other.

Founded in the fall of 2022, Orchestra raised its seed round from Andreessen Horowitz, Definition Capital, Insight Partners and 8VC, totaling about $20 million, according to Caplight data. The startup should not be confused with Orchestra BioMed, an unrelated Nasdaq-listed medical device maker that trades under the ticker OBIO.

OpenAI launched GPT-Rosalind in April, a model built specifically for biology and drug discovery and restricted to vetted U.S. enterprise customers such as Amgen and Moderna. Its companion product, Rosalind Workbench, connects the model to scientific tools and data so researchers can analyze results and plan experiments. Rosalind helps scientists determine what to test, while Orchestra is intended to manage what follows. OpenAI says the combined team will build agents connecting scientific findings with the decisions and follow-up studies needed to turn a promising result into an actual medicine.

OpenAI also launched ChatGPT Health in January, allowing users to connect their medical records to the chatbot, and acquired records startup Torch for a reported $100 million to build it out. That same month, it turned another acquisition, scientific writing tool Crixet, into its Prism platform for researchers. Prism, a new workspace launched Tuesday, is part of OpenAI’s expansion into the scientific pipeline.