Insider Brief
- Proxima, formerly VantAI, raised an oversubscribed $80 million seed round led by DCVC to advance an AI-driven platform for discovering proximity-based therapeutics.
- The company rebranded to Proxima to reflect its focus on building a combined technology and data stack for proximity medicines, which modulate protein–protein interactions and include modalities such as molecular glues and PROTACs.
- Proxima plans to use the funding to expand its structural proteomics and AI models, accelerate first-in-class drug programs across oncology and immunology, and advance partnered candidates toward clinical trials beginning in 2026.
PRESS RELEASE — Proxima (formerly VantAI), the AI-native biotech company pioneering the next generation of AI-driven drug discovery for proximity therapeutics, today announced an oversubscribed $80M seed financing. The round was led by DCVC, with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Braidwell, Roivant, AIX Ventures, Yosemite, Magnetic Ventures, Alexandria Venture Investments, Modi Ventures, and additional strategic and institutional investors.
As part of the financing, the company has rebranded from VantAI to Proxima to reflect its singular focus on building out both the technology and data layer needed to unlock proximity-based therapeutics. These next generation medicines work by controlling how proteins interact with one another, rather than simply inhibiting or activating a single target, and represent a superset that includes modalities such as molecular glues and PROTACs that have the potential to unlock historically undruggable disease targets.
The new funding will accelerate the advancement of first-in-class proximity-modulating therapeutics, expanding the druggable target space and enabling more reliable discovery of novel mechanisms across oncology, immunology, and other disease areas.
“Proximity-based medicines represent one of the most powerful new ways to treat disease, but progress has been constrained by a lack of structural data and accurate design tools,” said Zachary Carpenter, Co-Founder and CEO, Proxima. “By combining proteome-scale structural data with frontier AI models, we’re building the foundation needed to make these therapies broadly accessible rather than rare exceptions.”
Every biological process, both in health and disease, is mediated by protein-protein interactions, yet fewer than 5% of these interactions have been structurally characterized, leaving the vast majority of the human interactome unexplored. This uncharted territory represents one of the largest frontier opportunities in drug discovery, particularly for targets that have been historically challenging or entirely out of reach. Proxima’s mission is to comprehensively map this space, building the data foundation needed to unlock generalized rational design for all proximity-based medicines, both the waves of today such as molecular glues and PROTACs, but also the many emerging waves of tomorrow.
At the core of Proxima’s platform is its NeoLink data-generation technology, which produces structural information on protein complexes at proteome-wide scale, paired with its Neo AI model series. Together, these systems enable end-to-end discovery and development of proximity-modulating small molecules, with the goal of improving safety, shortening timelines, and enabling entirely new therapeutic mechanisms for challenging, previously “undruggable” targets.
“Proximity-based therapeutics represent one of most promising frontiers in modern drug discovery with the potential to treat previously intractable diseases and target ‘undruggable’ proteins,” said Jason Pontin, General Partner at DCVC, who will be joining the company’s board. “Proxima’s technology combines proteome-scale structural data with state-of-the-art generative AI foundation models, and the company’s team is uniquely well-positioned to discover and develop a new class of medicines.”
Proxima has established an industry-leading track record of partnering with top biopharmaceutical companies, securing multibillion-dollar research collaborations with leaders including Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Blueprint Medicines (acquired by Sanofi). Multiple co-developed programs with partners are currently advancing toward the clinic, with the first on track to enter clinical trials in 2026.
