Manas AI and Schrödinger Partner on Deep Integration of Physics-Based Modeling into AI Drug Discovery Platform
LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Manas AI has entered a multi-year strategic agreement with Schrödinger, securing privileged access to its physics-based molecular modeling platform along with direct engagement from internal technical teams.
Announced during the 2026 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, the deal positions Manas AI to accelerate discovery workflows across a wide modality space, with efforts underway to advance two small molecules and one biologic program to the clinic.
The agreement gives Manas not only large-scale access to Schrödinger’s software, but also priority collaboration with Schrödinger’s scientific and engineering staff, which is an unusually deep integration for external users. According to CEO Siddhartha Mukherjee, the platform is not a supplementary toolkit but a foundational component of Manas AI’s discovery engine.
Manas describes itself as building a first-in-class “physics-based atomic world model” (a term that borrows from AI foundation model literature) to predict binding interactions across diverse molecule types. Its generative engine is designed to output binders spanning small molecules, nanobodies, and siRNA. The core architecture relies on neuro-symbolic AI, combining physics-grounded machine learning with symbolic reasoning and reinforcement learning agents to handle de novo generation and optimization tasks.
Founded in 2025 by Mukherjee and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, Manas AI has raised approximately $50 million to date, including a $26 million seed extension in September 2025, when Ujjwal Singh was appointed CTO and retroactively named co-founder. Investors include General Catalyst, The General Partnership, Wisdom Ventures, and Blitzscaling Ventures, with Microsoft Azure providing infrastructure support.
We track deveoplments like this weekly in Where Tech Meets Bio—our newsletter on startups, platforms, and deals at the intersection of biotech and digital.
Topic: AI in Bio
