Greek co-founded Achira, a startup combining AI and physics-based methods for drug discovery, secured a €31.54 million seed round from Dimension, Amplify Partners, Compound, and NVentures (NVIDIA’s VC arm).
👯 Founders: John Chodera, Theofanis Karaletsos, Zavain Dar
📅 Founding year: 2023
🏭 Industry: Biotech
💥 Problem: Traditional computational tools for drug discovery, including AI and physics-based models, lack accuracy and scalability. Force field-based simulations have remained largely unchanged for 45 years despite advancements in compute power.
📣 Solution: Achira combines AI (neural network potentials) and physics-based simulations to create high-fidelity, scalable models for molecular dynamics, generating synthetic data to improve drug discovery.
👥 Customers: Likely pharmaceutical and biotech companies looking to enhance drug discovery through computational simulations.
🌱 Stage: Seed stage
💰 Investment amount: €31.54 million ($33 million)
🚀 Funded by: Dimension (lead), Amplify Partners, Compound, and NVentures (Nvidia’s VC arm)
💡 It will be spent on: Expanding the team of computational biologists, theoretical chemists, biophysicists, and chemical engineers; refining AI-driven simulation models.
💬 In their own words: “We want to turn drug discovery into 90% compute and 10% experiment. This is the domain where we can do it based on first principles.” – Theofanis Karaletsos.
💪 Their specialty: AI-powered molecular simulations that integrate physics principles to improve drug discovery.
👩🏫 Market: AI-driven computational drug discovery, targeting pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
📊 Traction: Still in early development; first-generation models expected to be announced later in 2025.
⚡ Competitors: Schrödinger (which uses physics-based molecular simulations), other AI-driven drug discovery companies like Insitro and Iambic Therapeutics.
