OpenAI Researcher Leaves to Build AI Drug Discovery Startup, Seeking $200M at $2B Valuation

Key points

• Miles Wang, an OpenAI researcher, is leaving to launch a drug discovery startup, according to four sources with knowledge of his plans.
• The startup is in talks to raise roughly $200 million at a $2 billion valuation, though Wang has disputed those specific figures.
• Venture capital firm Lightspeed is reportedly in discussions to lead the funding round.
• The company may focus on finding new uses for drugs that already exist or that previously failed clinical trials, two sources said.
• Wang left Harvard before completing his computer science degree, joining OpenAI in 2024.

Miles Wang walked away from a Harvard computer science degree to join OpenAI in 2024. He spent his time there co-authoring papers on how AI models can accelerate scientific discovery. Now, per TechCrunch AI, he's walking out of OpenAI to build something of his own.

Wang is in talks to raise roughly $200 million at a $2 billion valuation for a new AI drug discovery startup. Lightspeed is reportedly in discussions to lead the round. Wang disputed both the funding figures and the description of the company but didn't supply corrections. Lightspeed declined to comment. The deal isn't final.

Several fellow OpenAI researchers are expected to follow him to the new venture.

The startup may focus on a practical corner of drug development: finding new applications for medicines that already exist or that washed out in earlier clinical trials. Drugs already cleared by the FDA, the United States agency that oversees medicine safety, have passed safety testing. Skipping that stage can cut years off the road to patients.

For ordinary people, that could eventually mean faster access to treatments, especially where drug pipelines are sparse.

These talks land in a crowded, well-funded moment. As we reported on 15 July, AI startups absorbed 80% of all global venture capital in early 2026, and life sciences is drawing a heavy share of that. Chai Discovery, which uses AI to predict how molecules interact so researchers can spot new drug candidates, announced Tuesday it raised $400 million at a $3.8 billion valuation. Its co-founder Josh Meier also came through OpenAI. Separately, Isomorphic Labs, which spun out of Google DeepMind, raised a $2.1 billion Series B in May 2026.

Investors are clearly willing to place large bets that AI can genuinely compress drug discovery timelines, which traditionally stretch over a decade and cost billions.

What does this mean for patients?

Nothing changes at the pharmacy soon. Even with AI narrowing the field of candidates faster, clinical trials still take years. What the technology can plausibly do is cut the dead-end work early in the process, lowering cost and time before a drug reaches human testing. That's the real promise here, and it's also where I'd watch most carefully: Wang's approach of recycling known compounds is pragmatic, but the field is littered with companies that made similar claims and stumbled in late-stage trials.