Building AI Foundation Models for Molecular Design

Cofounders Jeremy Wohlwend and Gabriele Corso join the a16z podcast to discuss the launch of Boltz, a public benefit company building AI infrastructure for molecular biology. The conversation explains how breakthroughs following AlphaFold moved the field beyond protein structure prediction into modeling biomolecular interactions and binding strength, why open-source Boltz models saw rapid adoption across pharma and biotech, and how that work is now being productized. They outline the launch of Boltz Lab, a platform that brings protein and small-molecule design agents into scientist workflows, Boltz’s decision to operate as an infrastructure company rather than a therapeutics company, and how AI could reduce early drug discovery bottlenecks by improving molecular design and speeding iteration between computation and the lab. Resources: Follow Gabriele on X: Follow Jeremy on X: Follow Jorge X: Follow Zak on X: Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like,

You can listen to Building AI Foundation Models for Molecular Design online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Building AI Foundation Models for Molecular Design is an episode from Bio Eats World by a16z.

This episode is 00:47:02 long.

This episode was published on Jan 8, 2026.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Bio Eats World when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.