Lila Sciences

Founders & Key Leadership: Andrew Beam, PhD, George Church, PhD, Chris Fussell, Jon Hennek, PhD, Geoffrey von Maltzahn, PhD, Scott Robertson
Founding: 2023
Mission: Lila Sciences was founded with an audacious mission: to build Scientific Superintelligence. SSI is an advanced form of AI that not only can process vast amounts of data and make predictions, but can also conduct–under the supervision of humans–scientific experiments, generate new hypotheses, and test these hypotheses in real-world environments. The ultimate goal of Scientific Superintelligence is to produce new scientific knowledge and solutions to humankind’s greatest challenges at a scale, speed, and accuracy far beyond human capacity alone.
Employees: 150+ with plans to add 100+ more team members by the end of 2025. 80% of these roles are based in Boston
Workplace: On-site with some hybrid team members
Stage & Capital Raised: Seed Stage. $200M+ raised
Investors: General Catalyst, Flagship Pioneering, ADIA, March Capital, ARK Venture Fund, Altitude Life Science Ventures, Blue Horizon Advisors, State of Michigan Retirement System, Modi Ventures
Key Customers & Partners: Coming Soon!
Glassdoor Rating: N/A
Valuation (estimated): $200M+ raised in initial Seed fundraise, more accurate valuation to come!

Lila Sciences is building the world’s first scientific superintelligence platform. This team is chasing one of the most ambitious visions in any industry…right here in Boston. Lila is operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence, science and robotics technology to re-architect the scientific process, with benefits across health, climate/sustainability, global resilience, etc. . Basically, any company in any industry that has a research and development arm has the potential to partner with Lila Sciences to transform R&D and bring innovation forward, faster. They are accelerating discoveries autonomously and showing us what’s possible in this brave new AI driven world. Let 100 flowers bloom!

Flagship Pioneering has incubated 100+ companies over the past 25 years. Lila emerged from two internal Flagship ventures. Today the company leverages AI and large language models to conduct research autonomously across life, chemical, and material science. These projects set out to answer..

Could AI systems be trained to independently conduct research? 

Could AI generate hypotheses, design experiments, and verify outcomes autonomously across domains like therapeutics and sustainable materials?

The initial research said “yes”, the projects were combined into a “newco”, and Lila Sciences was spun out to build closed loop AI-driven discovery workflows so the wheel of science could turn autonomously.

Alright, alright let’s dumb this down for the generalists (as I stare into the mirror wide eyed).

Today, many AI startups and mega-apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT focus on prediction. They model how one variable might behave under a certain set of predictions or criteria. And we all know the AI opportunity is quickly growing to $1T+ (src). The challenge is that most AI systems can’t really verify anything beyond a digital dataset. They’ll just dig through old literature or existing datasets (if they’re even right) to generate algorithmically predicted tokens. 

Lila is stripping that all down to the studs, on hard mode. Their foundational insight is that AI on its own isn’t enough to drive breakthroughs across material science, biology, chemistry, etc. This team of world class, cross functional experts is building a full stack, closed loop AI driven scientific workflow platform from hypothesis generation all the way down to execution. Lila’s development process includes experiment design, robotic execution in the lab, and iterative learning all led by AI. Supported, of course, by humans where & when needed.

To execute this platform architecture, Lila is building what they call “AI science factories”. These laboratories include generalizable robotics controlled by AI and infrastructure for cross discipline discovery. Research systems designed by Lila have already discovered a novel catalyst to produce “green hydrogen” with promising overpotential properties (i.e., requiring less energy for conversion), screened with 95% less hands-on time compared to traditional workflows. That’s AI running real experiments to find breakthrough materials in a world challenged by access to rare earth materials.

Lila’s plan for commercialization is stealth, but there is wide applicability for their work from licensing to partnerships to vertical integrations, etc. The company has adopted an organizational structure based on Team of Teams, a leadership philosophy co-authored by Lila’s President Chris Fussell, who worked with former Commander Stanley McChrystal as Aide-de-Camp when McChrystal commanded the Joint Special Operations Command and then joined The McChrystal Group. Lila is empowering small, cross-functional pods of scientists, engineers, researchers, and AI experts to operate independently and build systems that can do chemistry and biology simultaneously with the culture to handle it.

Over the last 12 months, Lila has grown from ~25 employees to 150+ with plans to double their headcount again by the end of 2025. Some of those positions report to Chief Product Officer Jon Hennek who I was lucky enough to chat with for this profile.  He confims that Lila has raised over $200M in capital led by Flagship Pioneering, General Catalyst, Abu Dhabi’s Investment Authority, ARK Venture Fund, and others while also being recognized by CB Insights in their AI 100 most promising artificial intelligence startups of 2025.

Robotics talent, lab infrastructure, and deep technology networks make Boston a natural home for a startup operating at the edge of science and engineering as an AI-first research company built for scale.  Lila Sciences is actively recruiting the best and brightest minds in physical sciences, biotech, hardware, robotics, software, automation and AI & open-endeness… attracting PhD’s from positions at universities like MIT, Harvard, & CalTech. Maybe Lila is a new blueprint for Boston driven ambition and, of course, the execution to come. We’ll be watching!

Operators to Know:

• Amit Aggarwal, Chief Information Security Officer
  Patrick Fuller, VP, Product
• Molly Gibson, PhD / Co-Founder 
• Rafael Gómez-Bombarelli, PhD / CSO Materials
• John Gregoire, PhD / SVP Materials Science
• Timothy Hirzel, Senior Director Data
• Sue Kwon, Chief Communications Officer
• Ryan Leung, Senior Director, Life Science Product 
• Yue Lie,PhD Director, Cell Biology
• Jack Milwid, PhD Chief Culture Officer
• Chris O’Donnell, Chief Business Officer
• Honey Pamnani, Head of Human-AI Integration
• Madeline Silverman, Chief of Staff
• Elaine Shapland,PhD PM of the Life Science Platform 
• Alexandra Sneider,PhD Co-Founder & Head of CorporateDevelopment
• Ben Kompa, PhDCo-Founder & Head of AI Lab Innovation
• Jake Feala, PhD / SVP Autonomous Platform
• Kenneth Stanley, PhD / SVP Open-endedness

My investigative powers continue to need work so apologies to the Lila Sciences team I know I missed many up & coming operators internally

Key Roles To Be Hired:

• 40+ open roles across most functions

If I were interviewing here are some questions I’d ask:

• What are the core initial development areas for Lila Sciences?
• What are the key milestones over the next 12-24 months?
• What are the biggest challenges the team faces as it scales to hundreds of employees and multiple vertical product areas?
• What is the long term vision for the company? 
• What are the most important roles you’ll be looking to add in 2025 // teams that need the most help?

We’re optimizing for readability here so to learn more about Lila you’ll have to D.Y.O.R. I’m excited to watch this team bring scientific superintelligence to all of humanity in the age of AI. All citizens of Earth applaud your efforts. See you around town!