
Reid Hoffman starts Manas Ai, a new startup for drug discoveries,

Reid Hoffman, partner at Greylock and co-founder LinkedIn, speaks during the WSJ Tech live conference, which was organized on October 21, 2024 by Wall Street Journal on Montage Laguna Beach in Laguna Beach, California.
Frederic J. Brown | AFP | Getty pictures
The co -founder and risk capital provider of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman Airbnb and Zynga and at the same time support the Nuclear Fusion Startup Helion Energy.
Now Hoffman is immersed in health care, which he describes as “miraculous and scary”, with his latest startup manas ai.
Hoffman and Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, oncologist and Pulitzer price winner author, presented the company on Monday. Manas will use artificial intelligence to accelerate the drug discovery process, starting with new treatments for aggressive cancer types such as prostate cancer, lymphoma and triple breast cancer.
The development of new medication is traditionally a costly and complex process. According to a report by Deloitte, it can take more than 10 years and cost billions of dollars to develop a single drug. Manas said it would use its proprietary chemical libraries and AI-driven filters to identify the drug candidates faster and reduce the decades of discovery to just a few years.
“Most people had friends, family members etc. who died of cancer or had serious cancer problems,” said Hoffman in an interview this week in an interview. “If we can make a big difference, and that is the kind of things in which AI can make a big difference, it is the reason why AI can be great for humanity.”
Manas collected a seed production of 24.6 million US dollars, led by General Catalyst and Hoffman with the participation of Greylock, where he is a partner. Hoffman has been deep in the AI ​​in recent years. He was an early investor in Openaai when the project was still a non-profit, and he helped to start the bow with Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Sulyman. Last year Sulyman came to Microsoft, where Hoffman is a member of the board, as CEO of a new unit called Microsoft Ai. Several flexion employees joined him.
Manas also colored a partnership MicrosoftAnd will use his Azure Cloud Computing platform. Hoffman, who sold LinkedIn for 27 billion US dollars to Microsoft, said Manas also uses several additional tools from Microsoft, including some that are not yet available to the public.
Hoffman has been working with Mukherjee for about a year to create manas, even though the process has increased steam in recent months. Hoffman said the team felt ready to publicly share its ambitions this week since its baseline. The basic resources are appropriate.
“Totally pleased” to see competition
The company has a long way in front of it and the drug discoveries market is very competitive. Other startups together with large pharmaceutical companies like Eli LillyPresent Pfizer And MerchantAlso examine how AI uses to accelerate drug research and development.
Hoffman said that he feels confident in manas' approach, although he would be “totally pleased” if several companies flourish.
“We also bring what a startup usually brings what is the willingness to become very hard, to give up things quickly that don't work,” he said. “Live like this week is important and the result of this week is important.”
After the start of Manas on Monday, five different potential strategic partners have already contacted the company, said Hoffman.
Hoffman said the company was “fast” and “learning and used” in mode. One of his early initiatives is Project Cosmos that, according to the company's website, order the basic rules for drug binding. Hoffman refused to share additional details about the project.
Manas currently only has four employees – including Hoffman and Mukherjee – but Hoffman said it would grow. He acted as a “AI type” of the company, while Mukherjee serves as a “organic type”, he said. Ultimately, Manas is about fusion of the two fields.
“It is not just the best of science and it's not just the best of AI, because one of these two is not sufficient,” said Hoffman. “You have to put these two together.”
As a type of AI, Hoffman paid close attention to the sudden emergence of China's Deepseek in the USA this week
Deepseek began in January, when the startup released its open source argumentation model R1, which O1 is recorded by Openai. According to reports, the model was developed into a fraction of the costs for competing models from Openai, Anthropic, Google and others.
Hoffman said that Deepseek could encourage American companies to increase the pace and share their plans earlier, but the new revelations indicate that large models are a bad investment.
“The competition game is switched on,” he said, “but I don't think the 'Oh my god, we lose!' As an American technology.
REGARD: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on Deepseek