Exclusive: Aureka Biotechnologies Secures USD 100 Million Financing to Scale Up Its Foundation Model and Break New Ground in AI-Driven Drug Discovery

On August 11, Aureka Biotechnologies announced the completion of its USD 100 million Series B financing closed in multiple tranches. The first tranche was solely invested by Granite Asia. Subsequent tranches were led by a renowned industrial investor with HighLight Capital participating. Existing shareholders Qiming Venture Partners, Matrix Partners China and NRL Capital continued to invest. With this financing, Aureka Biotechnologies' total raised capital has reached nearly USD 200 million.

Aureka disclosed that the proceeds will be mainly invested in the R&D and large-scale training of its next-generation biological foundation model to strengthen model performance on core tasks including de novo molecular design, biomolecular structure modeling and function prediction. The company will further upgrade its experiment-centered Lab-in-the-Loop feedback framework, enabling deep closed-loop integration between the foundation model and proprietary single-cell functional screening, high-throughput experimental validation, as well as drug development platforms.

Previously, Aureka Biotechnologies has built closed-loop AI-native infrastructure. Going forward, it will strengthen the intelligent core of the full foundation model system. By integrating large-scale pre-training, project-specific fine-tuning, AI agents and scalable experimental systems, the firm will construct AI for Science infrastructure tailored to life sciences. The model will tackle not only discrete drug discovery tasks but also continuously learn biological rules to understand, generate, predict and intervene in complex biological systems.

As foundation models integrate faster with automated R&D infrastructure, Aureka Biotechnologies will evolve from "boosting drug discovery efficiency with AI" toward "modeling living systems via AI", continuously pushing the technical boundaries and industrial ceilings of AI-driven drug discovery.

Founded in 2023, Aureka Biotechnologies is an AI-native TechBio firm. It focuses on developing next-generation biological foundation models and building closed-loop AI-native infrastructure consisting of AI models, AI agents, digital biotechnology and experimental platforms to reshape the full workflow of drug discovery.

Life science is a complex research field highly dependent on real-world feedback. Sustained performance improvements for biological large models require not only innovations in computing power, algorithms and model architectures, but also high-quality experimental data that authentically characterizes molecular functions, alongside an experimental system capable of continuously validating model hypotheses, correcting model biases and generating iterative feedback.

To this end, Aureka Biotechnologies adopts Lab-in-the-Loop as a primary infrastructure for model R&D. It deeply integrates AI agents, high-throughput digital biotechnology, proprietary single-cell functional screening and self-built experimental platforms, forming a closed-loop system covering molecular generation, experimental design, functional validation, data feedback, model fine-tuning and candidate molecule development.

Within this system, the laboratory is no longer merely a verification step after the model generates outputs; instead, it serves as a core component directly participating in model learning and capability evolution. The model puts forward experimentally verifiable molecular designs and scientific hypotheses. Experimental platforms generate high-quality functional data, which is further fed back into the base foundation model and project-specific models to drive continuous model iteration and initiate the next round of design and validation.

This Lab-in-the-Loop mechanism enables Aureka Biotechnologies to autonomously generate large-scale, multi-dimensional, high-information-density functional experimental data, which is continuously deployed for the pre-training, reinforcement learning and project-specific fine-tuning of its foundation models. In contrast to model development approaches that predominantly rely on public static datasets, Aureka Biotechnologies' models continuously receive experimental feedback from real-world drug discovery programs and evolve iteratively within the design-validation-learning loop. This creates a self-reinforcing closed-loop flywheel linking data, models, experiments and drug assets, an approach aptly described as "using dynamism to conquer static limitations".

Built upon closed-loop AI-native infrastructure, Aureka Biotechnologies has independently developed its biological foundation model AuraIDE. Trained at scale on proprietary protein co-evolution data, the model captures deep underlying relationships among protein sequences, structures, evolution and function, establishing leading advantages in biomolecular structure prediction and de novo molecular design.

AuraIDE is not a vertical algorithm built for a single task. Instead, it serves as a biological foundation model transferable to diverse drug discovery scenarios via task adaptation and project-specific fine-tuning. Its capabilities are expanding beyond protein structure modeling and molecular generation toward biomolecular interaction modeling, function prediction, and multi-objective optimization under complex design constraints.

AuraIDE's open-source version, OpenDDE, has passed independent third-party evaluation, with its performance ranking among the top global open-source biomolecular modeling platforms.

Findings from third-party evaluations and real experimental results consistently demonstrate that Aureka Biotechnologies' foundation models deliver leading capabilities in protein structure prediction and de novo design, alongside the capacity to translate model outputs into authentic molecular functions. Enabled by continuous feedback via the Lab-in-the-Loop framework, the models are evolving from merely "predicting biological structures" toward "generating functional biomolecules with target activity".

OpenDDE's Performance in Third-Party Evaluation on the Public Antibody–Antigen Structure Prediction Benchmark FoldBench v1

Source: Tamarind Bio, Open Models Beat AlphaFold3, FoldBench v1 Benchmark.

Leveraging its biological foundation model, proprietary single-cell functional screening platform and project-tailored fine-tuning technologies, Aureka Biotechnologies has achieved scalable generation of high-value, differentiated antibodies for challenging targets such as GPCRs and bispecific monoclonal antibodies that are intractable via conventional approaches.

For specific projects, Aureka Biotechnologies conducts project-level fine-tuning on the foundation model centered on target mechanisms, functional phenotypes and druggability objectives. This evolves the model from general biological intelligence into a dedicated model tailored to specific drug discovery challenges. Subsequently, AI agents collaboratively execute target characterization, molecular generation, computational evaluation, experimental design and result analysis. Experimental data are continuously fed back into the model, establishing a closed-loop learning system operating for individual projects.

The company's end-to-end agent-driven R&D infrastructure spans molecular generation, druggability assessment, experimental validation, result feedback and candidate molecular development. It enables rapid translation of scientific hypotheses, model capabilities and experimental capacities into developable pharmaceutical assets, continuously supporting the advancement of internal pipelines and external collaborative programs.

Currently, Aureka Biotechnologies has established strategic collaborations with multiple leading global pharmaceutical companies to jointly advance the development of differentiated antibody drugs. Over the past two years, it has achieved commercial revenues in the tens of millions of US dollars, validating its AI platform's delivery capabilities, scalability, and commercialization potential in real-world drug discovery projects.

Dr. Zhao Weian, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aureka Biotechnologies, stated: "When leading biological foundation models are truly integrated with scalable R&D infrastructure, we move beyond merely boosting efficiency at discrete stages of drug discovery. Instead, we are building the next-generation drug discovery engine capable of understanding, generating and predicting biological systems. This marks a critical step for Aureka Biotechnologies toward advancing into biological world models."

Under Aureka Biotechnologies' long-term technical roadmap, biological world models will move beyond merely predicting static molecular structures. Instead, they will further simulate intermolecular interactions, deduce potential outcomes of molecular design and engineering, and empower AI agents to autonomously plan, execute and iterate on drug design tasks.

With the proceeds from this financing round, Aureka Biotechnologies will further advance the coordinated evolution of its biological foundation models and closed-loop AI-native infrastructure, accelerate the validation and translation of model capabilities in real-world drug discovery programs, and continuously expand the capability frontier of generative AI for antibody drug research and development.