ByteDance AI drug spinout Anew Labs raises $290M angel round
Anew Labs, which spun out of ByteDance in June 2026, raised a $290 million angel round in September 2026 at a reported valuation of about 10 billion yuan, which the report calls China's first AI drug-discovery company to reach that valuation in a first round. Investors include Sequoia China, IDG Capital, Hillhouse Venture Capital, Five Source Capital, Gaorong Ventures, Primavera Venture Partners and Boyu Capital, with Sino Biopharmaceutical and the Shanghai Future Industry Fund joining as strategic investors; ByteDance remains the controlling shareholder and continues to supply Volcano Engine compute. The company has released biological AI models Protenix and PXDesign along with AnewMind, a scientific reasoning model for drug-development decisions, and lists four preclinical pipeline assets, with a lead oral small-molecule candidate it describes as the world's first to target both IL-17A and IL-17F, currently in preclinical lead optimization. Anew Labs said it is focused on R&D and declined an interview.
The spinout and its outsized first round are a public test of whether Big Tech compute and algorithms can be turned into competitive drug pipelines.