ByteDance completed a $290 million round for Anew Labs, the AI drug discovery unit it spun out in June, at a valuation of about $1.5 billion, according to Reuters. HSG, IDG Capital and Hillhouse Investment led the round, and ByteDance held on to 56% of the company and still supplies its computing power. Anew began inside ByteDance in 2021 with roughly 50 researchers under Liu Kai and took the algorithms, platforms and pipeline with it when it left, and it now runs models for protein structure prediction, antibody design, and an LLM assistant for discovery decisions. Its furthest-along program is a set of oral small molecules aimed at IL-17F, a driver of chronic inflammation the company says small molecules have struggled to hit, and that one is in lead optimisation.
