Building AI Foundation Models for Molecular Design

About this episode

The episode discusses the launch of Boltz, an AI infrastructure company for molecular biology, and its impact on drug discovery and molecular design.

Cofounders Jeremy Wohlwend and Gabriele Corso join the a16z podcast to discuss the launch of Boltz, a public benefit company building AI infrastructure for molecular biology. The conversation explains how breakthroughs following AlphaFold moved the field beyond protein structure prediction into modeling biomolecular interactions and binding strength, why open-source Boltz models saw rapid adoption across pharma and biotech, and how that work is now being productized. They outline the launch of Boltz Lab, a platform that brings protein and small-molecule design agents into scientist workflows, Boltz’s decision to operate as an infrastructure company rather than a therapeutics company, and how AI could reduce early drug discovery bottlenecks by improving molecular design and speeding iteration between computation and the lab.

People in this episode

Guests: Jeremy Wohlwend, Gabriele Corso

Topics covered

• AI in molecular biology
• drug discovery
• protein design
• biomolecular interactions
• open-source models

Keywords

• AI
• molecular design
• drug discovery
• Boltz
• AlphaFold
• biomolecular interactions
• open-source

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Boltz, AlphaFold, Boltz Lab, pharma, biotech

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