BigHat Biosciences, a San Mateo, California-based biotechnology company developing AI-designed protein therapeutics, has raised a $75 million Series C financing co-led by DFJ Growth and Premji Invest, bringing its total funding to $223 million. The financing will support the company’s clinical-stage drug pipeline and the continued development of its autonomous AI platform for protein design.
The round included participation from Catalio Capital Management, LG Technology Ventures, and Sigmas Group. Existing investors participating in the financing included 8VC, Alexandria Venture Investments, Amgen Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Discovery Ventures, GRIDS Capital, Intermountain Ventures, Eli Lilly and Company, Merck Global Health Innovation Fund, Quadrille Capital, and Section 32.
BigHat has developed an integrated AI and experimental platform designed to generate proprietary biological data and use it to accelerate the discovery and optimization of protein-based medicines.
The company’s technology combines frontier AI models with autonomous laboratory experimentation, creating a continuous feedback loop between molecular design and experimental validation.
Rather than relying exclusively on existing biological datasets, BigHat generates proprietary experimental information tailored to specific drug discovery challenges. That information is used to train and improve AI models while guiding the design of therapeutic candidates.
The approach is intended to help researchers develop molecules with the properties required for clinical development, including the ability to interact with specific biological targets.
The latest financing comes as BigHat advances BHB810, its first AI-designed therapeutic to enter clinical development.
BHB810 is a novel CDH17-directed antibody-drug conjugate being evaluated for the treatment of gastric cancer and other advanced gastrointestinal tumors.
The company has dosed the first patient in its Phase 1 clinical trial, marking a milestone for its AI drug discovery platform.
Antibody-drug conjugates combine an antibody designed to recognize a specific biological target with a therapeutic payload. The approach is intended to deliver treatment more selectively to cells expressing the target.
BHB810 represents one of the first AI-designed biologic therapies to advance into human clinical testing.
BigHat is also advancing BHB299, an investigational T-cell engager designed to selectively target solid tumors expressing CEACAM6.
The therapy uses an avidity-driven design intended to improve target selectivity. BHB299 is approaching completion of preclinical development, and BigHat plans to initiate human clinical trials in 2027.
Beyond these two lead programs, the company has developed a proprietary pipeline of preclinical antibody therapeutics targeting oncology and immunology.
The Series C proceeds will support further development of these programs while expanding BigHat’s capabilities in AI-driven protein engineering.
The company has also established collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies, including Amgen, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, AbbVie, and Eli Lilly.
BigHat has completed a strategic collaboration with Johnson & Johnson and three project collaborations with Merck. It has also expanded its relationship with Eli Lilly beyond two therapeutic collaborations by joining Lilly TuneLab, an initiative supporting machine learning-enabled biologics discovery.
These partnerships provide opportunities to apply BigHat’s platform to additional therapeutic areas, molecular designs, and drug discovery challenges.
The company has also strengthened its leadership team to support its transition into clinical development.
In June 2026, BigHat appointed Stefan Weigand, Ph.D., formerly Head of Large Molecule Research at Roche, as Chief Scientific Officer. John Corbin, Ph.D., previously Chief Technology Officer at Tizona Therapeutics, joined as Chief Development Officer in June 2023.
Before its latest financing, BigHat raised an $80 million Series B in 2022 and a $44 million Series B extension in 2025.
The Series C provides additional resources to advance its clinical programs toward important readouts while scaling the AI infrastructure and automated experimentation capabilities supporting its broader therapeutic pipeline.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our mission is to design transformative therapeutics by combining frontier AI with the autonomous generation of gold-standard biological data. This financing will help us advance both sides of that mission: our pipeline of BigHat-designed therapeutics, beginning with BHB810, one of the first AI-designed biologics to reach the clinic, and our leading platform for AI-designed biologics. We look forward to continuing to form partnerships with major technology and life sciences companies and are thrilled to partner with a group of investors who share our vision. With their support, we can continue to scale our platform and pipeline to deliver better medicines to patients more quickly.”
Peyton Greenside, Co-Founder And CEO Of BigHat Biosciences
“BigHat has uniquely enabled reinforcement learning for molecular design with a platform optimized for industry-leading speed, at the scale today’s frontier models need. This integrated learning loop is a powerful advantage, enabling BigHat to rapidly design and optimize therapeutics with the properties needed for clinical development. The strength of the platform is reflected in both BigHat’s partnerships with pharmaceutical and tech companies and its growing pipeline of next-generation therapeutics. We’re excited to support BigHat as it scales its platform and advances these programs toward patients.”
Justin Kao, Partner At DFJ Growth
