Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock, Unveils New Healthcare Startup Manas AI
Reid Hoffman, a billionaire and venture capitalist, has launched a new healthcare startup called Manas AI, which aims to accelerate the drug discovery process using artificial intelligence. Hoffman, who co-founded LinkedIn and has made lucrative bets on companies like Airbnb and Zynga, is partnering with Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, to develop new treatments for aggressive cancers.
Manas AI will use proprietary chemical libraries and AI-powered filters to identify drug candidates more quickly, reducing the decades-long discovery process to just a few years. The company has raised $24.6 million in seed funding and has partnered with Microsoft, which will provide access to its Azure cloud-computing platform and other tools.
Hoffman believes that AI can make a huge difference in healthcare, particularly in the area of cancer research. “Most people have had friends, family members, etc., who’ve died from cancer or had serious cancer problems,” he said. “If we can make a huge difference on this, and this is the kind of thing that AI can make a huge difference in, it’s the kind of reason why AI can be great for humanity.”
The company is already attracting attention from potential strategic partners, with five different companies approaching Manas AI since its launch. Hoffman is confident in the company’s approach, but is also open to seeing other companies succeed in the space. “We also bring the thing that a startup usually brings, which is a willingness to go very hard, abandon things quickly that aren’t working,” he said.
Manas AI currently has just four employees, but plans to grow. Hoffman is acting as the company’s “AI guy,” while Mukherjee serves as the “bio guy.” The company is focused on melding the two fields of science and AI to develop new treatments.
The emergence of China’s DeepSeek in the US has also caught Hoffman’s attention. DeepSeek released an open-source reasoning model R1 that rivals OpenAI’s o1, and was reportedly developed at a fraction of the cost. Hoffman believes that the competition will encourage American companies to pick up the pace and share their plans sooner, but does not see it as a threat. “The competition game is on,” he said, “But I don’t think it’s the ‘Oh my God, we’re losing!’ as American technology.”