OpenAI leads $15 million seed in Red Queen Bio for AI biosecurity

Red Queen Bio announced it raised a $15 million seed round led by OpenAI, launching an AI biosecurity company that aims to “scale biological defenses” as AI capabilities advance. 

The founders wrote that the company was spun out of HelixNano and that the seed includes investors Cerberus Ventures, Fifty Years and Halcyon Futures. 

They added that the work began with this seed and outlined a plan to map AI-enabled biothreats and pre-build medical countermeasures using leading models, lab automation and reinforcement learning. 

Co-founder Hannu Rajaniemi separately announced the launch and the $15 million round led by OpenAI in a post linking to the company site. For context, OpenAI’s Startup Fund previously appeared as an investor in Valthos, a biosecurity software startup that introduced itself in a  post.