Through computational tools, Valthos analyzes biological data to design adaptive solutions against emerging threats. PHOTO: VALTHOS
Reimagining biodefense at the intersection of AI, biology and urgency.
Updated
November 27, 2025 3:26 PM
Through computational tools, Valthos analyzes biological data to design adaptive solutions against emerging threats. PHOTO: VALTHOS
Valthos has raised US$30 million in seed funding, led by the OpenAI Startup Fund, Lux Capital and Founders Fund, to advance its mission of building next-generation biodefense systems.
The company’s work comes at a time when biotechnology is evolving at an unprecedented pace. Biotechnology is moving at record speed. These new tools can lead to life-changing medical discoveries, but they also bring the risk of dangerous biological agents being developed faster than ever.
“The issue at the core of biodefense is asymmetry”, said Kathleen McMahon, co-founder of Valthos. “It’s easier to make a pathogen than a cure. We’re building tools to help experts at the frontlines of biodefense move as fast as the threats they face”. The gap Valthos aims to close is between the rapid rise of biological threats and the slower pace of developing cures. Therefore, the company is developing AI systems that can rapidly analyze biological sequences and significantly shorten the time needed to design medical countermeasures.
“In this new world, the only way forward is to be faster. So we set out to build a new tech stack for biodefense”, said Tess van Stekelenburg, co-founder of Valthos. “This software infrastructure strengthens biodefense today and lays the groundwork for the adaptive, precision therapeutics of tomorrow”.
The company was founded by van Stekelenburg, a partner at Lux Capital and McMahon, the former head of Palantir’s Life Sciences division. Together, they’ve built a multidisciplinary team of experts from Palantir, DeepMind, Stanford’s Arc Institute and MIT’s Broad Institute, bringing together deep experience in software engineering, machine learning and biotechnology.
“Technology is moving fast. An industrial ecosystem of builders, companies and solutions further democratizes AI to provide broad resilience, and ensures the U.S. continues to lead as AI increasingly powers everything around us. As AI and biotech rapidly advance, biodefense is one of the new industry verticals that helps maximize the benefits and minimize the risks”, said Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer. “Valthos is pushing the frontier of protection and defense in one of the most strategic intersections of multiple world-changing technologies, and with the team to do it”.
Looking ahead, Valthos plans to expand its engineering team and scale its software infrastructure for both government and commercial partners — moving closer to its goal of enabling faster, smarter and more adaptive biodefense capabilities.
Keep Reading
From information gaps to global access — how AI is reshaping the pursuit of knowledge.
Updated
November 28, 2025 4:18 PM
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Paper cut-outs of robots sitting on a pile of books. PHOTO: FREEPIK
Encyclopaedias have always been mirrors of their time — from heavy leather-bound volumes in the 19th century to Wikipedia’s community-edited pages online. But as the world’s information multiplies faster than humans can catalogue it, even open platforms struggle to keep pace. Enter Botipedia, a new project from INSEAD, The Business School for the World, that reimagines how knowledge can be created, verified and shared using artificial intelligence.
At its core, Botipedia is powered by proprietary AI that automates the process of writing encyclopaedia entries. Instead of relying on volunteers or editors, it uses a system called Dynamic Multi-method Generation (DMG) — a method that combines hundreds of algorithms and curated datasets to produce high-quality, verifiable content. This AI doesn’t just summarise what already exists; it synthesises information from archives, satellite feeds and data libraries to generate original text grounded in facts.
What makes this innovation significant is the gap it fills in global access to knowledge. While Wikipedia hosts roughly 64 million English-language entries, languages like Swahili have fewer than 40,000 articles — leaving most of the world’s population outside the circle of easily available online information. Botipedia aims to close that gap by generating over 400 billion entries across 100 languages, ensuring that no subject, event or region is overlooked.
"We are creating Botipedia to provide everyone with equal access to information, with no language left behind", says Phil Parker, INSEAD Chaired Professor of Management Science, creator of Botipedia and holder of one of the pioneering patents in the field of generative AI. "We focus on content grounded in data and sources with full provenance, allowing the user to see as many perspectives as possible, as opposed to one potentially biased source".
Unlike many generative AI tools that depend on large language models (LLMs), Botipedia adapts its methods based on the type of content. For instance, weather data is generated using geo-spatial techniques to cover every possible coordinate on Earth. This targeted, multi-method approach helps boost both the accuracy and reliability of what it produces — key challenges in today’s AI-driven content landscape.
Additionally, the innovation is also energy-efficient. Its DMG system operates at a fraction of the processing power required by GPU-heavy models like ChatGPT, making it a sustainable alternative for large-scale content generation.
By combining AI precision, linguistic inclusivity and academic credibility, Botipedia positions itself as more than a digital library — it’s a step toward universal, unbiased access to verified knowledge.
"Botipedia is one of many initiatives of the Human and Machine Intelligence Institute (HUMII) that we are establishing at INSEAD", says Lily Fang, Dean of Research and Innovation at INSEAD. "It is a practical application that builds on INSEAD-linked IP to help people make better decisions with knowledge powered by technology. We want technologies that enhance the quality and meaning of our work and life, to retain human agency and value in the age of intelligence".
By harnessing AI to bridge gaps of language, geography and credibility, Botipedia points to a future where access to knowledge is no longer a privilege, but a shared global resource.