Biotech startups in San Francisco

Kristen Fortney & Eric Morgen

Longevity biotech founded 2015; mines human aging-cohort data with AI/ML to discover targets for metabolic and aging-related diseases, including obesity/metabolic drugs. Went public on Nasdaq (BIOA) in Septe...

Nancy Stagliano, Patrick Daugherty

Founded 2008; pioneers 'Probody' conditionally-activated masked antibodies and ADCs that localize activity to the tumor microenvironment to widen the therapeutic window. Announced a strategic ADC collaborati...

Robert Swanson & Herbert Boyer

Founded 1976, the world's first biotechnology company and the birthplace of the modern industry, spun out of UCSF recombinant-DNA research. Its 40+ building South SF campus anchors the region's biotech clust...

Yujiro Hata

Oncology biotech (South SF + La Jolla) focused on precision-medicine synthetic-lethality drugs, using molecular diagnostics to match patients to targeted therapies. Publicly traded (Nasdaq: IDYA); lead PARG ...

Trevor Hallam & team (Stanford/UC science)

Clinical-stage biotech using its cell-free protein-synthesis platform (XpressCF) to design next-generation antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) and bispecifics, notably in ovarian cancer. Publicly traded (Nasdaq:...

Emily Leproust, Bill Peck, Bill Banyai

Founded 2013; a synthetic-biology leader using a proprietary silicon-based platform to manufacture synthetic DNA at scale for drug discovery, diagnostics, agriculture and DNA data storage. Publicly traded (N...

Daphne Koller

Founded 2018 by Coursera/Stanford ML pioneer Daphne Koller. A TechBio drug-discovery platform integrating in-vitro cellular data with human clinical data via machine learning to find targets and intervention...

Jennifer Doudna, Trevor Martin, Janice Chen, Lucas Harrington

Co-founded 2017 by CRISPR Nobel laureate Jennifer Doudna; develops ultra-small CRISPR systems (Cas14/Casɸ) for in-vivo therapeutics and CRISPR-based diagnostics. Reached unicorn status in 2021 ($195M raise)....

Ken Drazan (CEO), Kole Roybal & Alex Marson (UCSF science)

Founded 2019 on UCSF-developed programmable cell-therapy tech; builds next-generation autologous CAR-T therapies for solid tumors. Raised $325M Series C in September 2024, one of the year's largest biotech r...

Andy Yeung, Ivana Djuretic

Founded 2019 and backed by Third Rock Ventures; develops 'cis-targeted' immunotherapies (cytokines that signal only to specific immune cell types) to improve precision in cancer and immunology. Lead asset AB...

Priscilla Chan & Mark Zuckerberg (founders); Stephen Quake (science)

Nonprofit research institute (launched 2016) in Mission Bay that funds and collaborates across UCSF, UC Berkeley and Stanford, pursuing AI-powered biology, virtual cell models and infectious-disease tools. B...

Ali Madani

Founded 2022; a Bio-AI 'frontier models for programmable biology' company. First to demonstrate LLM-generated functional proteins (Nature Biotechnology, 2023) and open-sourced OpenCRISPR-1, an AI-designed ge...

Benjamin Oakes, Jennifer Doudna, Brett Staahl, David Savage

Founded 2018 out of the Doudna lab; engineers proprietary CRISPR (CasX/XE) genome and epigenome editors for in-vivo therapeutics. Multi-billion-dollar collaborations with Sanofi and Prevail/Lilly. Presented ...

Marc Tessier-Lavigne (CEO), David Baker (co-founder)

Launched April 2024 with a landmark ~$1B commitment incubated by ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Labs. Combines machine learning, large-scale data generation and therapeutic development; co-founded by Nob...

nitrogen-fixing microbial agtech

Berkeley-based agtech using gene-edited soil microbes to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizer for corn, wheat and other crops, cutting emissions and input costs. Has raised ~$617M. The flagship Bay Area agt...