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Foundation models, virtual cells, AI-designed molecules, and the companies putting them to work.

Foundation models, virtual cells, AI-designed molecules, and the companies putting them to work.

SynBioBeta 2026. May 4-7, San Jose, California
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Xaira's CEO and GSK's SVP of AI are on the same main stage panel. Boltz's founder is presenting alongside Novo Nordisk's VP of Computational Drug Design. NVIDIA and OpenAI are in the building. So are the startups building foundation models, virtual cells, and AI-designed therapeutics, ingredients, chemicals, and materials that didn't exist two years ago.

SynBioBeta is where the people building at the intersection of AI and biology present what they've built, and where the people funding, buying, and competing with them come to see it.

The Startups Founders to Meet, Fund and Partner with.

And the BD and R&D Leads
That Will Be Your Customers and Partners:

Who’s Coming to SynBioBeta?

“SynBioBeta is a who’s who of AI and biology.
This is where the future is being built, so don't miss it”
“SynBioBeta is a who’s who of AI and biology.
This is where the future is being built, so don't miss it”

Eric Schmidt

Former CEO

"For every single fund at Boom Capital, one of our best companies has come directly from SynBioBeta. I met Mammoth Bio at SynBioBeta, and I met Nabla Bio at SynBioBeta."

Celestine Schnugg

Founder

"Nabla was accelerated into existence because of SynBioBeta. I met Seth Bannon from 50 Years, Cee Cee Schnugg from Boom Capital, and others from Y Combinator there, and those same people seeded Nabla. The vibe, leverage, and energy at SynBioBeta are unreal."
"Nabla was accelerated into existence because of SynBioBeta. I met Seth Bannon from 50 Years, Cee Cee Schnugg from Boom Capital, and others from Y Combinator there, and those same people seeded Nabla. The vibe, leverage, and energy at SynBioBeta are unreal."

Surge Biswas

Founder

"Our Series A came together because of a little bit of SynBioBeta magic. I’ve been attending for a decade and it’s been inspiring to watch the field evolve from a lot of hopes and dreams to real products and applications."
"Our Series A came together because of a little bit of SynBioBeta magic. I’ve been attending for a decade and it’s been inspiring to watch the field evolve from a lot of hopes and dreams to real products and applications."

Jacob Glanville

Founder & CEO

"I met Algen at SynBioBeta and later invested in the company. It’s exactly the kind of connection that makes the community so valuable."
"I met Algen at SynBioBeta and later invested in the company. It’s exactly the kind of connection that makes the community so valuable."

Bill Tai

Co-founder

"Every time I attend SynBioBeta, I walk away with something transformative – a new investor, a fantastic hire, or an idea that changes how we work. It’s a community unlike any other."
"Every time I attend SynBioBeta, I walk away with something transformative – a new investor, a fantastic hire, or an idea that changes how we work. It’s a community unlike any other."

Ola Wlodek

CEO

"I first met Centivax at SynBioBeta - and then led their Series A."
"I first met Centivax at SynBioBeta - and then led their Series A."

Steve Jurvetson

Co-Founder

Sessions Will Include

1

Main Stage Panel

•

11:00 AM

-

11:30 AM

Human Health

From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology

Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level, while therapies must ultimately work across tissues, organs, and whole patients. This scale mismatch means that even highly accurate cellular predictions can fail to translate in the clinic. This session explores strategies to bridge that gap. How do we connect single-cell dynamics to organ-level physiology and patient outcomes? How do we preserve biological context while scaling models? And how do we ensure that virtual biology does not stop at simulation, but informs real therapeutic decisions? Speakers will discuss multiscale modeling that links molecular and cellular systems to higher-order biology; spatial and high-dimensional phenotypic data that retain context; and integrated computational–experimental loops that translate cellular signals into clinically meaningful biomarkers. Together, we ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the full complexity of patients?

Featuring

Marc Tessier-Lavigne

Xaira

Chairman & CEO

Neuroscience pioneer and former Stanford president building AI biotech.

Kim Branson

GlaxoSmithKline

SVP, Global Head

Drug-discovery AI architect turning data into medicines.

David Hallett

Recursion

CSO

Veteran “drug hunter” leading Recursion’s industrialized, AI-driven discovery.

Ron Alfa

NOETIK Inc.

Co-Founder & CEO

Physician-scientist and veteran building AI cancer therapeutics.

Stacie Calad-Thomson

NVIDIA

BD, Life Sciences

1

Main Stage Panel

•

11:00 AM

-

11:30 AM

Human Health

From Cells to Patients: Solving the Scale Mismatch in Virtual Biology

Drug discovery often measures biology at the cell level, while therapies must ultimately work across tissues, organs, and whole patients. This scale mismatch means that even highly accurate cellular predictions can fail to translate in the clinic. This session explores strategies to bridge that gap. How do we connect single-cell dynamics to organ-level physiology and patient outcomes? How do we preserve biological context while scaling models? And how do we ensure that virtual biology does not stop at simulation, but informs real therapeutic decisions? Speakers will discuss multiscale modeling that links molecular and cellular systems to higher-order biology; spatial and high-dimensional phenotypic data that retain context; and integrated computational–experimental loops that translate cellular signals into clinically meaningful biomarkers. Together, we ask: how do we ensure virtual biology reflects not just what cells do in isolation, but how biology behaves in the full complexity of patients?

Featuring

Marc Tessier-Lavigne

Xaira

Chairman & CEO

Neuroscience pioneer and former Stanford president building AI biotech.

Kim Branson

GlaxoSmithKline

SVP, Global Head

Drug-discovery AI architect turning data into medicines.

David Hallett

Recursion

CSO

Veteran “drug hunter” leading Recursion’s industrialized, AI-driven discovery.

Ron Alfa

NOETIK Inc.

Co-Founder & CEO

Physician-scientist and veteran building AI cancer therapeutics.

Stacie Calad-Thomson

NVIDIA

BD, Life Sciences

2

Main Stage Panel

•

10:35 AM

-

11:05 AM

AIxBIO

Programmable Molecules: AI and the Rise of Context-Aware Therapeutics

For the first time, AI is enabling us to imagine medicines that “think” - turning on only inside diseased cells or under specific physiological conditions. Neural networks trained on RNA, protein, and cellular data are unlocking a new generation of programmable therapies with unprecedented precision, from cancer drugs that remain inert until encountering tumor signals to RNA medicines capable of adapting to dynamic biological environments. But designing intelligent molecules is only part of the challenge. As AI expands the space of possible therapeutics, the field must also confront a critical question: how do we reliably build, test, and manufacture increasingly complex biological designs? This session explores the emerging continuum from AI-designed molecules to manufacturable programmable therapeutics, examining how advances in sequence design, synthesis, delivery, and validation are translating computational insight into real-world medicines. The future of medicine isn’t static molecules - it’s intelligent, adaptive therapeutics engineered across the full stack, from algorithm to clinic.

Featuring

Vikram  Agarwal

Sanofi

Head of mRNA Platform Design Data Science

Simon Kohl

Latent Labs

Founder & CEO

Tasuku Kitada

Strand Therapeutics

Co-founder, President

Georgia Lu

Magnet Ventures

Founder & Mng Partner

AI-biotech investor blending M&A instincts with founder coaching.

2

Main Stage Panel

•

10:35 AM

-

11:05 AM

AIxBIO

Programmable Molecules: AI and the Rise of Context-Aware Therapeutics

For the first time, AI is enabling us to imagine medicines that “think” - turning on only inside diseased cells or under specific physiological conditions. Neural networks trained on RNA, protein, and cellular data are unlocking a new generation of programmable therapies with unprecedented precision, from cancer drugs that remain inert until encountering tumor signals to RNA medicines capable of adapting to dynamic biological environments. But designing intelligent molecules is only part of the challenge. As AI expands the space of possible therapeutics, the field must also confront a critical question: how do we reliably build, test, and manufacture increasingly complex biological designs? This session explores the emerging continuum from AI-designed molecules to manufacturable programmable therapeutics, examining how advances in sequence design, synthesis, delivery, and validation are translating computational insight into real-world medicines. The future of medicine isn’t static molecules - it’s intelligent, adaptive therapeutics engineered across the full stack, from algorithm to clinic.

Featuring

Vikram  Agarwal

Sanofi

Head of mRNA Platform Design Data Science

Simon Kohl

Latent Labs

Founder & CEO

Tasuku Kitada

Strand Therapeutics

Co-founder, President

Georgia Lu

Magnet Ventures

Founder & Mng Partner

AI-biotech investor blending M&A instincts with founder coaching.

3

Breakout Session

•

3:30 PM

-

4:15 PM

AIxBIO

Beyond Static Predictions — AI for Protein Dynamics and Multi-Cell Models

The next frontier of biology isn’t in predicting a single static protein structure, but in capturing how proteins move, fold, and interact across time and environments. This session explores how AI can illuminate protein conformations and dynamics, and extend those insights into virtual multi-cellular or tissue models. Experts will discuss the challenge of integrating heterogeneous datasets and instruments, and how breakthroughs in dynamic modeling could reshape drug design, disease understanding, and biomanufacturing. Can we build models that reflect the living, breathing complexity of biology—not just snapshots, but motion?

Featuring

Gabriele Corso

Boltz

CEO

Built DiffDock and the Boltz open-source models reshaping drug discovery.

Peter Clark

Novo Nordisk

VP, CDD

Computational drug-design leader, shipped candidates from CAR-T to peptides.

Theofanis Karaletsos

Achira

Co-founder

Tanja Kortemme

UCSF

Vice Dean of Research

De novo protein-design pioneer; NIH Pioneer Award winner.

Elliot Hershberg

Amplify Partners

Partner, Author

Driving the Century of Biology

3

Breakout Session

•

3:30 PM

-

4:15 PM

AIxBIO

Beyond Static Predictions — AI for Protein Dynamics and Multi-Cell Models

The next frontier of biology isn’t in predicting a single static protein structure, but in capturing how proteins move, fold, and interact across time and environments. This session explores how AI can illuminate protein conformations and dynamics, and extend those insights into virtual multi-cellular or tissue models. Experts will discuss the challenge of integrating heterogeneous datasets and instruments, and how breakthroughs in dynamic modeling could reshape drug design, disease understanding, and biomanufacturing. Can we build models that reflect the living, breathing complexity of biology—not just snapshots, but motion?

Featuring

Gabriele Corso

Boltz

CEO

Built DiffDock and the Boltz open-source models reshaping drug discovery.

Peter Clark

Novo Nordisk

VP, CDD

Computational drug-design leader, shipped candidates from CAR-T to peptides.

Theofanis Karaletsos

Achira

Co-founder

Tanja Kortemme

UCSF

Vice Dean of Research

De novo protein-design pioneer; NIH Pioneer Award winner.

Elliot Hershberg

Amplify Partners

Partner, Author

Driving the Century of Biology

4

Breakout Session

•

4:30 PM

-

5:15 PM

AIxBIO

The Data Reality Check: Human-First Biology for AI Models

Why do so many in silico models fail when moved to the lab or clinic? Too often, they’re trained on incomplete, non-human, or non-representative datasets. This session tackles the “data gap” head-on: from interoperability bottlenecks and the black box problem to the limits of current virtual cell simulations (~50 million perturbations vs. the billions biology demands). Panelists will explore how to create “human-first” datasets that reflect real biology, unlock mechanistic interoperability, and close the discovery–development divide. The goal: build AI tools that can directly identify viable drug candidates instead of stalling in silico.

Featuring

Andrei Georgescu

Vivodyne

CEO

Johnny Yu

Tahoe Therapeutics

CSO & Co-founder

Avantika Lal

Genentech

Principal ML Scientist II

Building DNA foundation models that design regulatory sequences.

Daniel Georgiev

Sampling Human

CEO & Co-founder

Krish Ramadurai

AIX Ventures

Partner

TechBio investor backing AI-designed drugs and breakthroughs.

4

Breakout Session

•

4:30 PM

-

5:15 PM

AIxBIO

The Data Reality Check: Human-First Biology for AI Models

Why do so many in silico models fail when moved to the lab or clinic? Too often, they’re trained on incomplete, non-human, or non-representative datasets. This session tackles the “data gap” head-on: from interoperability bottlenecks and the black box problem to the limits of current virtual cell simulations (~50 million perturbations vs. the billions biology demands). Panelists will explore how to create “human-first” datasets that reflect real biology, unlock mechanistic interoperability, and close the discovery–development divide. The goal: build AI tools that can directly identify viable drug candidates instead of stalling in silico.

Featuring

Andrei Georgescu

Vivodyne

CEO

Johnny Yu

Tahoe Therapeutics

CSO & Co-founder

Avantika Lal

Genentech

Principal ML Scientist II

Building DNA foundation models that design regulatory sequences.

Daniel Georgiev

Sampling Human

CEO & Co-founder

Krish Ramadurai

AIX Ventures

Partner

TechBio investor backing AI-designed drugs and breakthroughs.

5

Breakout Session

•

4:30 PM

-

5:15 PM

Tools & Tech

AI Co-Scientists: From Pipettes to Protocols

Biology is entering an era where AI agents don’t just analyze data — they co-design, plan, and execute experiments. Multi-agent systems like CRISPR-GPT demonstrate how AI can act as a true lab co-pilot: decomposing complex genome editing projects into stepwise workflows, selecting tools, troubleshooting, and even drafting protocols that allow junior researchers to perform sophisticated edits on their first attempt . Beyond CRISPR, new systems like BioMARS integrate reasoning agents with robotics, while biotech companies are testing “AI lab assistants” that monitor and adjust experiments in real time. This session explores how multi-agent copilots are making biology more reproducible, democratizing complex workflows, and pushing the boundaries of lab autonomy. The central question: when AI can plan, troubleshoot, and validate experiments end-to-end, how should scientists and institutions govern this new power?

Featuring

Le Cong

Stanford University

Associate Professor

CRISPR-GPT creator: AI co-pilot for gene editing.

Nicholas Larus-Stone

Benchling

Head of AI Agents

Bits in Bio founder building AI agents for science.

George Peabody

Ginkgo Bioworks

Program Lead

Anna Marie Wagner

Transfyr

Co-founder & CEO

5

Breakout Session

•

4:30 PM

-

5:15 PM

Tools & Tech

AI Co-Scientists: From Pipettes to Protocols

Biology is entering an era where AI agents don’t just analyze data — they co-design, plan, and execute experiments. Multi-agent systems like CRISPR-GPT demonstrate how AI can act as a true lab co-pilot: decomposing complex genome editing projects into stepwise workflows, selecting tools, troubleshooting, and even drafting protocols that allow junior researchers to perform sophisticated edits on their first attempt . Beyond CRISPR, new systems like BioMARS integrate reasoning agents with robotics, while biotech companies are testing “AI lab assistants” that monitor and adjust experiments in real time. This session explores how multi-agent copilots are making biology more reproducible, democratizing complex workflows, and pushing the boundaries of lab autonomy. The central question: when AI can plan, troubleshoot, and validate experiments end-to-end, how should scientists and institutions govern this new power?

Featuring

Le Cong

Stanford University

Associate Professor

CRISPR-GPT creator: AI co-pilot for gene editing.

Nicholas Larus-Stone

Benchling

Head of AI Agents

Bits in Bio founder building AI agents for science.

George Peabody

Ginkgo Bioworks

Program Lead

Anna Marie Wagner

Transfyr

Co-founder & CEO