In the shadows of big pharma’s glacial timelines, Persist AI isn’t just moving faster, they’re reengineering the clock. While most formulation teams are busy arguing over pipette tips and timelines, Persist’s Cloud Lab just pulled off 700 formulation tests in 60 days. You read that right. The old guard does 10 to 15 in a month. Persist? They’re doing 700. In two. That’s not a speed boost, that’s warp drive in a Petri dish.
Co-founders Karthik Raman, PhD and Christopher Shelner weren’t born in a boardroom, they were forged in the cleanroom. Before launching Persist in Fall 2022, they were building next-gen automation at Zymergen. Karthik brings nine patents in sustained-release tech and a PhD in bioengineering. Chris? Certified Six Sigma Black Belt who scaled satellite manufacturing ops for Northrop Grumman and Apple. These aren’t PowerPoint cowboys, they’re builders who can code, calibrate, and close.
And now they’ve secured a $12M oversubscribed Series A, led by Spero Ventures with backing from heavy hitters like Eli Lilly and Company, Global Brain Corporation (via SHIMADZU CORPORATION), SignalFire, MBX Capital, and returning believers 2048 Ventures, Innospark Ventures, and Y Combinator. That brings Persist’s total raise to $16M. They're not fundraising to flash. They're scaling, $5.2M to launch a GMP production line with Nivagen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. for long-acting injectables, and $3.8M to train AI on 50,000 formulation datasets by next year. The rest? Hiring 23 engineers and scientists across West Sacramento and Bangalore to make this Cloud Lab the neural network of modern drug development.
Persist’s bet is simple: AI-driven robotics can cut material use by 99.9%, predict winning drug recipes, and help pharma escape the trap of formulation guesswork. When you can build with 1 mL instead of 1000, and hit GMP-readiness in quarters, not years, you stop playing catch-up and start playing kingmaker. They’ve already got four of the top 10 pharma companies in their corner, plus 12 next-gen biotechs chasing breakthroughs in diabetes, oncology, and neuro.
Sara Eshelman at Spero Ventures said it best, “Persist eliminates the formulation bottleneck that delays 78% of drug candidates.” That’s not disruption. That’s infrastructure.
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