Biodefense startup Valthos emerged from stealth on Friday, unveiling $30 million in funding backed by OpenAI—the creator of ChatGPT—to develop and deploy artificial intelligence for real-time detection and counteraction of biological threats.
The company’s AI system is designed to rapidly update medical countermeasures in pace with evolving biological threats, enabling researchers and government agencies to swiftly identify and respond as pathogens emerge.
“Among all AI applications, biotechnology holds the greatest potential—but also the most catastrophic risks,” the company wrote on X.
Founded in November 2023 in New York, Valthos is led by Kathleen McMahon, former head of life sciences at Palantir Technologies; Tess van Stekelenburg, a former computational neuroscience researcher at the University of Oxford; and Victor Mao, a founding AI engineer who previously worked as a research engineer at Google DeepMind.
“In this new world, the only way forward is to move faster. So we set out to build the tech stack for biodefense,” they wrote. “Our team of computational biologists and software engineers applies cutting-edge AI to detect biological threats and dynamically update medical countermeasures in real time.”
The $30 million investment from OpenAI’s startup fund was joined by Lux Capital and Founders Fund. The company says it is actively hiring engineers and researchers to scale its platform for government and life sciences partners.
“Technology is advancing rapidly. One of the best ways to keep up is through more technology, more research, more startups, and more entrepreneurial drive,” said Jason Kwon, Chief Strategy Officer at OpenAI, in a post on X. “An industrial ecosystem of builders, companies, and solutions further democratizes AI to deliver broad resilience and ensure U.S. leadership as AI increasingly powers everything around us. Biodefense is a critical frontier in this race.”
Understanding Biodefense
Biodefense encompasses the technologies and systems designed to protect populations from biological threats—ranging from naturally occurring diseases to lab accidents or deliberately engineered pathogens. Traditional defenses rely on vaccines, surveillance networks, and stockpiled therapeutics, but these often lag behind in a world where synthetic biology can rapidly generate novel or enhanced organisms.
Valthos claims its platform uses AI to analyze biological sequences and adapt existing drugs or treatments on demand—potentially reducing the time to identify new threats and develop responses from months to just hours.
Researchers are increasingly leveraging AI to predict disease risk before symptoms appear. For example, the Delphi-2M model, trained on UK Biobank data, can forecast the risk of over 1,000 diseases up to two decades in advance—illustrating how AI is shifting medicine from reactive to preventive and enabling early detection of emerging outbreaks before they escalate into epidemics.
Valthos’ launch follows a recent RAND Corporation report warning that governments remain unprepared for AI-driven cyber-biological crises.
“Today, the pace of biological weaponization outstrips our ability to develop new therapies,” Valthos stated. “Our future hangs in the balance.”
