Xconomy: Five Questions With a16z's Vijay Pande on AI and Making New Drugs

In startup world these days, the word "biotech" is increasingly accompanied by "computational" and two, two-letter initialisms: AI and ML. Those tools--artificial intelligence and machine learning, respectively--have been around for decades, but in recent years have become faster and cheaper, accelerating their use by those in the business of discovering and developing new drugs. Another startup looking to take advantage of those improvements, South San Francisco-based Genesis Therapeutics, has scored $4.1 million in seed funding and publicly joined the growing fray of biotechs with grand ambitions of disrupting the slow, costly process of discovering and developing new medicines. Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z, led its seed round, one of a handful of seed-stage investments it has made in biotech. Felicis Ventures, another VC firm based in Silicon Valley, also invested.