Optic

Profile (continued)

PRODUCT EVOLUTION: The company began as an AI drug-discovery / molecule-screening company centered on its B1 ligand-based small-molecule search model (able to screen ~40 billion-compound libraries such as Enamine REAL) and, later, B2 (a sequence-based/structure-based binder-prediction model positioned as rivaling AlphaFold3/Boltz-2 for small-molecule binding, at ~1,700 molecules/sec on a single NVIDIA T4 GPU) and B3 (a universal ADME/Tox predictor). Over 2024–2026 the company repositioned/expanded from an 'AI-for-science' molecule-discovery company into a broader 'AI-native operating system for pharma decision-making,' adding an agentic AI layer (Asset Scouting, In-Licensing, Due Diligence, Commercialization agents) that monitors global multilingual data sources (SEC filings, FDA guidance, clinical trial registries, patents including Chinese-language patents, and literature) to surface undervalued drug assets and support deal-making — explicitly marketed as being faster/more accurate than generic LLMs like ChatGPT/Claude/GPT-5/Gemini for this use case, per company benchmarking blog posts and a March 2026 research paper co-authored with advisor Luba Greenwood (former Head of M&A at Roche).

PARTNERSHIPS / COMMERCIAL DEALS: Optic/Bioptic has announced several named commercial and research collaborations: an up-to-$17.5M collaboration with oncology-therapeutics venture Vindur Tx (announced November 6, 2024) to discover selective kinase inhibitors for 'undruggable' cancer targets; a chemical-sourcing integration partnership with eMolecules (October 3, 2024) giving access to 20M+ purchasable compounds; a discovery partnership with Oncobox (May 8, 2024) that identified VEGFR-3 as an oncology target and produced selective inhibitor candidates; and an expanding strategic collaboration with venture-creation firm Mechanica Partners (first noted informally, expanded and formally announced via press release June 6, 2025) under which Optic is eligible for milestone payments and royalties across Mechanica's biotech portfolio. Optic also has an academic collaboration with Stanford University (Xinnan Wang's lab), which used BIOPTIC B1 to discover novel Miro1-targeting neuroprotective compounds for Friedreich's ataxia, published in Cell Chemical Biology (reported by the company in June 2026) — the second peer-reviewed publication (after a 2025 JCIM paper on LRRK2 inhibitors for Parkinson's disease) demonstrating B1 in a real drug-discovery application. The company also has an in-house pipeline of 2 fully-owned and 4 co-development/partner drug programs spanning neurodegenerative disease (LRRK2/Parkinson's — program OPT-LR42, started May 2024), metabolic disease (TNIK/obesity — OPT-TN65, June 2024), oncology (VEGFR3/solid tumors — OPT-FL95, co-owned, November 2024), and undisclosed partner programs in neurodegeneration (OPT-M501), oncology (OPT-C216), and autoimmune disease (OPT-G322, May 2025).

FUNDING: No funding round amounts, dates, post-money valuations, or a complete investor list could be confirmed from available sources. Greylock's own portfolio page confirms Greylock invested at the company's Seed round (labeled 'First Partnered: Seed') with Venture Partner David Thacker as the named investor, but discloses no amount or date. A search of SEC EDGAR (browse-edgar company search and full-text search) found no Form D filing under the name 'Optic, Inc.' or matching 'Optic Inc' — meaning either the round was small enough / structured such that no Form D was required or found under this exact legal name, or a Form D was filed under a different legal name not identified here. The homepage of bioptic.io has an 'Our Investors' section displaying a marquee of investor logos, but all logo images carry empty alt text, so no investor names beyond Greylock could be identified with confidence from that section; other than Greylock, no other investor names are confirmed. The $17.5M Vindur Tx deal and the Mechanica Partners economics (milestones + royalties) are commercial/collaboration payments, not equity financing, and should not be counted as funding raised.

TEAM: CEO and Founder Andrey 'Dobry' Doronichev previously served as Head of Mobile at YouTube and Director of Product at Google Stadia and Google AR/VR; earlier in his career (per company podcast-series blog posts) he built one of the first mobile content platforms in post-Soviet Russia, emigrated, and joined Google via a cold email. Co-founder Vlad Vinogradov (VP of AI) and co-founder Roman Doronin (VP of Engineering) round out the founding team per the company's About page. The extended leadership/advisory team includes Kong T. Nguyen, PhD (VP of Science; previously at Atomwise per company background description), Luba Greenwood, JD (Business Strategy Advisor; former Head of M&A at Roche, former Head of Business Development at Verily, former Managing Partner at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's venture arm), and Daniel/'Danie' Rohle, PhD (Science Advisor). An arXiv preprint (arXiv:2406.14572, the B1 model paper, submitted June 2024) additionally lists co-authors Ivan Izmailov and Simon Steshin alongside Vlad Vinogradov and Kong T. Nguyen, suggesting a broader technical team beyond the six people shown on the public 'Leadership Team' page.

MARKET POSITION / COMPETITION: Optic/Bioptic operates in the crowded AI-drug-discovery space alongside companies such as Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Insilico Medicine, Iambic Therapeutics, Isomorphic Labs, Genesis Therapeutics, and Chai Discovery (these are inferred sector peers based on general industry knowledge, not named as competitors by Optic/Bioptic itself in any source reviewed). The company differentiates itself by combining (a) proprietary, wet-lab-validated scientific models (B1/B2/B3) with (b) an agentic, multilingual 'business intelligence' layer aimed at deal-sourcing/due diligence for investors and venture builders (its comparison materials explicitly position BIOPTIC against generic LLMs like ChatGPT/Claude/GPT-5/Gemini rather than against other biotech-AI vendors).

RECOGNITION/MILESTONES: Gold medal, CAFA5 protein-function-prediction competition (Aug 2023); gold medal, BELKA Kaggle challenge presented at NeurIPS 2024 (Jul/Dec 2024); membership in the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAIH), effective Jan 19, 2025; first peer-reviewed paper (JCIM, LRRK2 inhibitors) Sept 2025; AAAI 2026 Deployed Application Award (Singapore, Jan 2026) for an agentic due-diligence paper; keynote at the Machines Can Think (MCT) 2026 summit (Jan 2026, reported to ~1,000 in-room attendees and 'over 4 million' livestream viewers on X/Twitter per the company's own account); second peer-reviewed paper (Cell Chemical Biology, Stanford collaboration on Friedreich's ataxia) reported June 2026. As of this research (August 2026) the company appears actively operating and publishing.

Go-to-market

Biopharma/pharmaceutical companies, biotech drug developers, venture-creation/venture-studio firms (e.g., Mechanica Partners), biotech investors and venture arms, and academic drug-discovery labs.

Ownership

private