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Reid Hoffman enters 'wondrous and terrifying' world of health care with latest AI startup

Reid Hoffman Enters Health Care with AI Startup Manas AI

Reid Hoffman Ventures into Health Care with Manas AI

Reid Hoffman, a name synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurship, is once again making headlines. Known for co-founding LinkedIn and his role as a partner at Greylock, Hoffman has a track record of successful investments in companies like Airbnb and Zynga. His latest venture, however, takes him into the complex and challenging world of health care with the launch of Manas AI.

Hoffman, alongside Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, an oncologist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, introduced Manas AI to the world. The company aims to revolutionize the drug discovery process using artificial intelligence, focusing initially on aggressive cancers such as prostate cancer, lymphoma, and triple-negative breast cancer.

The traditional drug development process is notoriously lengthy and expensive, often taking over a decade and costing billions of dollars to bring a single drug to market. Manas AI plans to disrupt this timeline by utilizing proprietary chemical libraries and AI-powered filters to identify potential drug candidates more efficiently, potentially reducing the discovery process to just a few years.

Hoffman expressed his motivation for this venture, stating, “Most people have had friends, family members, etc., who’ve died from cancer or had serious cancer problems. 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.”

Manas AI has already secured $24.6 million in seed funding, led by General Catalyst and Hoffman himself, with participation from Greylock. Hoffman’s deep involvement in AI is well-documented, having been an early investor in OpenAI and co-founding Inflection AI with DeepMind’s Mustafa Suleyman. Last year, Suleyman joined Microsoft, where Hoffman serves on the board, as CEO of a new unit called Microsoft AI.

Strategic Partnerships and Technological Integration

Manas AI has also formed a strategic partnership with Microsoft, leveraging its Azure cloud-computing platform. Hoffman, who previously sold LinkedIn to Microsoft for $27 billion, mentioned that Manas is utilizing several additional Microsoft tools, some of which are not yet publicly available.

The collaboration between Hoffman and Mukherjee to create Manas has been in the works for about a year, gaining momentum in recent months. With foundational resources in place, the team felt ready to unveil their ambitious plans to the public.

Facing Competition in a Crowded Market

The drug discovery market is highly competitive, with numerous startups and major pharmaceutical companies like Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and Merck exploring AI’s potential to accelerate research and development. Despite the competition, Hoffman remains confident in Manas’s approach and welcomes the success of multiple companies in the field.

“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,” Hoffman said. “Live like this week matters, and the result of this week matters.”

Since its launch, Manas has attracted interest from five potential strategic partners, indicating a promising start. The company is currently in “build quickly” and “learn and deploy” mode, with one of its early initiatives, Project Cosmos, aiming to map out the fundamental rules of drug binding. However, Hoffman declined to provide further details about the project.

Building a Team and Bridging Disciplines

Manas AI currently has a small team of four employees, including Hoffman and Mukherjee. Hoffman describes his role as the “AI guy,” while Mukherjee is the “bio guy,” emphasizing the importance of integrating the best of science and AI to achieve their goals.

“It isn’t just the best of science and it isn’t just the best of AI, because either of those two are insufficient,” Hoffman said. “You need to put those two together.”

As the AI landscape evolves, Hoffman is keeping a close eye on developments such as the emergence of China’s DeepSeek in the U.S. DeepSeek gained attention with its open-source reasoning model R1, which rivals OpenAI’s o1 and was developed at a fraction of the cost of other models by companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.

Hoffman believes that while DeepSeek may prompt American companies to accelerate their efforts, it does not indicate that large models are a poor investment. “The competition game is on,” he said, “But I don’t think it’s the ‘Oh my God, we’re losing!’ as American technology.”

WATCH: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on DeepSeek

In conclusion, Reid Hoffman’s entry into the health care sector with Manas AI represents a bold step towards leveraging AI to tackle some of the most challenging issues in drug discovery. With strategic partnerships, a focus on innovation, and a commitment to integrating AI and science, Manas AI is poised to make a significant impact in the field.

Original source article rewritten by our AI can be read here.
Originally Written by: Ashley Capoot

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