Inceptive

Inceptive is a Palo Alto-based biotechnology company that develops end-to-end foundation models trained to design therapeutic molecules directly from diverse biological observations. It focuses on sequence-based modalities — mRNA, siRNA, antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) and peptides — where sequence largely determines function. Rather than relying on a narrow, structure-based approach, the company trains models on heterogeneous, multi-scale data spanning sequence, function and structure, drawn from public datasets, data generated in its own laboratory, and partner data.

The company pairs computational work with an in-house wet lab, describing the interface between the two as "the beach." Designs and novel data are scored in silico to refine models and assays, while the wet lab ranks models and validates designs in vitro and in vivo on a high-frequency cycle intended to compress the time and cost of moving from design to drug candidate. Inceptive states that its algorithms are built to extrapolate beyond the best molecules present in training data, iteratively improving candidate molecules rather than reproducing known ones.

Inceptive was founded in 2021 by Jakob Uszkoreit, a former Google AI researcher and co-author of the Transformer paper "Attention Is All You Need," who applied transformer-style techniques to biological rather than text or image data. The company employs an "antedisciplinary" team of scientists, AI researchers and engineers and maintains offices in Palo Alto, Berlin and Zurich, with wet research and development at 3440 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto, California.

Founding story

Founded in 2021 by AI and biochemistry practitioners, led by Jakob Uszkoreit, who previously conducted AI research at Google and is credited with proposing the attention focus behind the 2017 transformer paper. He left Google to apply the same class of models to biological data, with the stated ambition of writing "biological software" that runs in cells in the body.

Business model

Inceptive customizes its foundation models for the discovery programs of pharmaceutical partners and co-designs medicines with them, with partners taking candidates into the clinic. Press reporting describes the company designing and lab-validating molecules and then licensing successful candidates to pharmaceutical companies for development and clinical trials; Inceptive itself does not run the trials.

Licensing of AI-designed molecules to pharmaceutical companies and multi-year strategic partnership agreements in which Inceptive tunes models to partner data and transfers knowledge.

Traction

Announced partnerships include a strategic AI collaboration with Alnylam on RNAi therapeutics and a previously reported program with a large European pharmaceutical company on an infectious-disease mRNA vaccine. The company reported publishing work on designing in vivo CAR-T with its platform and has been featured in media including TED and podcast interviews. Total disclosed equity funding was reported at roughly $120 million across a seed and the 2023 round.

Latest developments

In June 2026 Inceptive announced a strategic AI collaboration with Alnylam to accelerate the discovery of RNAi therapeutics, and published material on designing in vivo CAR-T using its platform. The company continues to recruit scientists and engineers across AI and biology.