10x Science co-founders Vishnu Tejus, David Roberts, and Andrew Reiter

Before any biologic drug reaches a patient, it has to be characterized at the molecular level. Today, that work is done almost entirely by hand, by PhD scientists, using software that predates the iPhone. As pharma pushes into increasingly complex therapeutics, the gap between what needs to be characterized and who can do it has become one of the most expensive unsolved problems in drug development, and one of the most obvious places for AI to finally deliver.

What drew us to 10x Science starts with the founders. David built the next generation of protein characterization out of Caroline Bertozzi’s lab at Stanford, one of the most important chemistry labs in modern science, led by a Nobel Laureate. Andrew brings deep computational and biological expertise from the Broad Institute, MIT, and Harvard. Between them, they have 45+ peer-reviewed publications in Nature and Science. The scientists at major pharma companies who evaluate new tools have spent their careers reading their work. That kind of credibility took years to build. Pair that with Vishnu, a 2x YC founder who went to college at age 11, and you get the rare life sciences team that combines deep domain authority with proven execution at speed. That is extremely hard to replicate, and it’s the foundation of why this company wins.

Pharma has spent the last several years on AI promises that have yet to be fulfilled, particularly at the drug discovery layer. Billions went into AI-driven drug prediction platforms that still haven’t produced the breakthroughs the industry is waiting on. As a result, pharma wants AI that delivers measurable ROI today, and 10x Science does exactly that. Characterization is needed at every stage of the drug lifecycle, which means 10x Science’s business doesn’t hinge on whether any single drug gets approved. This is a recurring, durable revenue model in an industry that typically rewards only binary wins. 10x is growing the way a breakout AI company scales, with compounding revenue and rapid enterprise adoption, in an industry where that almost never happens.

Every demo they’ve run with a major pharma company has led to next steps toward a contract. That is the clearest signal we know. The longer-term opportunity is what makes this investment exceptional: as the platform characterizes more molecules across more organizations, it accumulates something that has never existed. A shared, evolving layer of molecular intelligence grounded in real experimental data. The question of what separates drugs that work from drugs that don’t has never had a data-driven answer. 10x Science is building toward one, and Initialized is proud to be backing them from the start.