Converge Bio, a generative AI platform for accelerated drug discovery and development, announced on Wednesday that it has raised $5.5 million in Seed funding, led by TLV Partners. Converge Bio’s platform uses large language models (LLMs) trained on biological and chemical data (DNA, RNA, protein sequences, and small molecules) to help biotech and pharmaceutical companies discover and develop better-performing drugs in less time. Converge Bio was founded in 2024 by CEO Dov Gertz, CTO Oded Kalev, and Chief Scientific Officer Iddo Weiner. Gertz holds a master’s in bioinformatics from Tel Aviv University, where he developed a machine learning pipeline to find new types of CRISPR systems used for gene editing. His research resulted in a scientific publication with Nobel laureate professor Jennifer Doudna. Kalev is an ML expert who previously managed an R&D Group of 20 engineers and ML experts at the cybersecurity company Perception Point. As an early adopter of LLMs, Oded applied these technologies during the COVID lockdowns to analyze RNA sequences of the virus, achieving state-of-the-art results in COVID variant clustering using his own GPU at home. Weiner, formerly VP of research at BiomX, completed his Ph.D. in engineering and biology in just two and a half years with ten peer-reviewed papers.

Full report : Israeli startup Converge Bio’s ‘everything store’ for biotech LLMs gets seed funding of $5.5 million.