Biotechnology & drug discovery · AI-native platform
1910 Genetics
A Boston biotech that runs small and large molecule drug discovery through one AI platform, backed by a five-year commercial partnership with Microsoft. It has no drug in a human trial. Its case for itself rests on federal grants, a patent application, and a five-year-old $25.7 million financing round.
Named for a disease it does not treat
The company is not built around sickle cell disease. Its name comes from it anyway. “1910 is the year that the first patient in the United States with sickle cell anemia was diagnosed,” founder Jen Nwankwo said on the Harry Glorikian Show in 2023. Sickle cell was, she said, the first disease where medicine understood the molecular cause all the way down. That is the point of the name: a reminder to only chase diseases where the underlying biology is already clear, not a mission to cure sickle cell itself.
Nwankwo trained as a biochemist, earned a PhD in pharmacology at Tufts and Harvard Medical Schools researching platelets, sickle cell disease and pain pathways, worked in drug discovery at Novartis and Eli Lilly, then consulted at Bain before founding 1910 in 2018.
The pitch: biology first, computation in service of it
“We always say at 1910 that biology is king and our North Star,” Nwankwo told Emles Venture Partners in 2021. The company's platform, called ITO for Input, Transform, Output, is meant to work across therapeutic modalities. It pairs computational modeling with an in-house automated wet lab so that predicted molecules get tested rather than just simulated. 1910 has described three proprietary data streams it uses to train its models: computational data from atomistic modeling, wet lab proxy biological data from sequencing, and wet lab ground truth biological data from biochemical, cellular and in vivo assays.
The company says it applies this to internal programs in neurological and autoimmune disease and cancer, and to paid collaborations with outside biopharma and tech partners.
The backdrop is Eroom's Law, Moore's Law spelled backward: pharma R&D productivity has trended downward for decades despite exploding computing power. M12, one of 1910's lead investors, noted the industry was projected to spend about $200 billion on R&D in 2021, while the average therapy still took over ten years, cost more than $1 billion, and had under a 10% approval chance. 1910's argument is that AI-native infrastructure, not the industry's old processes, is the fix.
Nwankwo's own framing, in a 2021 interview, was blunter about the economics that keep the industry from changing on its own. Describing the price of a drug, she said “only about 2% of that represents the cost of making that specific drug, while 98% is profit.” High margins, she argued, have historically left the industry with little incentive to fix a process everyone agrees is inefficient.
The company frames itself as agnostic beyond its name: it works on both small molecules and protein therapeutics, draws on whichever ML architecture fits a question, and runs both an internal pipeline and paid outside partnerships.
From stealth to a $25.7 million round
1910 raised an initial, unannounced seed round led by Sam Altman, then CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator, with FoundersX Ventures, Y Combinator, Scientia Ventures, Emles Advisors and others. It emerged from stealth in March 2021 with a combined seed and Series A of $22 million, co-led by M12, Microsoft's venture fund, and Playground Global. Samir Kumar of M12 and Jory Bell of Playground Global joined the board. The company's own later figure for the two rounds combined is $26.1 million, which the underlying SEC filing does not exactly match, see the funding page for that detail.
During the pandemic 1910 used discovery engines it called SUEDE and BAGEL to screen for and design small molecules aimed at blocking SARS-CoV-2 from entering host cells. Nwankwo presented the work at the NIH's Antiviral Summit in November 2020 and is a contributing author on the published summit report.
The Microsoft years
In June 2023 Microsoft named 1910 one of six launch customers, and its only biotech and pharma one, for Azure Quantum Elements, a cloud platform combining AI and high-performance computing for chemistry. That private preview became a five-year commercial agreement announced in February 2024. Under the deal, 1910 offers its platform through three models: co-discovery, where a partner brings a target and 1910 runs design, manufacturing and testing; co-engineering, where 1910 helps a partner build its own AI models; and platform-as-a-service. “Together with 1910, Microsoft is charting a course for a billion-dollar business in AI-driven drug discovery and development,” said Zulfi Alam, Microsoft's corporate vice president of quantum.
In October 2024, Accenture, through Accenture Ventures, made an undisclosed equity investment in 1910 and agreed to a business collaboration to help biopharma clients adopt the platform. Two Accenture executives joined 1910's Business Advisory Board and two more joined its Technology Advisory Board.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Form D | CIK 0001855990, filed Apr 19, 2021. Total offering and total sold both $25,709,907, to 19 investors, first sale Jan 29, 2021. No later Form D has been filed under this CIK. | Public record |
| NIH grant | STTR Phase I award 1R41NS118992-01, $546,376, NINDS, Jul 2021 to Dec 2023, PI Jennifer O. Nwankwo, for calpain-1 inhibitors as non-opioid chronic pain therapeutics. The only NIH or NSF award found under the company's name. | Public record |
| Patent application | US20250257051A1, “Substituted pyrimidine compounds as tyk2 inhibitors,” assignee 1910 Genetics Inc., inventors Jennifer Nwankwo, Lewis Whitehead and Robert Young. Priority Jul 28, 2022, published Aug 14, 2025, pending. | Public record |
| Peer-reviewed output | One chemistry paper with a 1910 Genetics affiliation in PubMed, a computational study of a reaction mechanism (Haeffner, Chemistry, 2023), not a drug candidate paper. Nwankwo also appears as a contributing author on a 2020 NIH antiviral summit report. No paper describing a 1910 drug candidate was found. | Not found |
| Clinical trials | No study naming 1910 Genetics found in a ClinicalTrials.gov search. No FDA 510(k) or PMA filing, expected for a preclinical company. | Not found |
| Microsoft partnership | Confirmed by both parties: a private preview in June 2023, a five-year commercial agreement in February 2024, on Azure Quantum Elements. | Confirmed both sides |
| Accenture investment | Announced jointly, October 2024. Amount not disclosed, no SEC filing surfaced to size it. | Company and partner stated |
| Named biopharma partners | None found. Microsoft and Accenture are technology and services partners, not biopharma companies buying discovery programs. | Not found |
Read plainly: 1910 has real federal grant money, a real technology partnership with Microsoft confirmed by both sides, and one pending patent naming a specific drug target, TYK2. What it does not yet have is a molecule in human testing, a peer-reviewed paper on a 1910-discovered candidate, or a named pharmaceutical company paying for a discovery collaboration.
What to watch
- Whether the TYK2 program named in the 2025 patent, or any other internal program, produces a clinical candidate.
- A named biopharma partner for co-discovery or co-engineering work under the Microsoft deal.
- A public filing that sizes the Accenture Ventures investment.
- Any peer-reviewed publication on 1910's wet lab or AI-designed candidates.
In their words
“The name comes from 1910 is the year that the first patient in the United States with sickle cell anemia was diagnosed. That is true, but what relevance does sickle cell disease have for us? Well, sickle cell is the first disease for which we completely understand the molecular basis.”
Jen Nwankwo, founder and CEO, The Harry Glorikian Show, Apr 25, 2023 · Interview
“We always say at 1910 that biology is king and our North Star.”
Jen Nwankwo, Emles Venture Partners profile, Sep 3, 2021 · Interview
“only about 2% of that represents the cost of making that specific drug, while 98% is profit.”
Jen Nwankwo, Emles Venture Partners profile, Sep 3, 2021 · Interview
“We are thrilled to be collaborating with 1910 Genetics to bring their pioneering AI drug discovery engines to Azure Quantum Elements.”
Jason Zander, EVP of Strategic Missions and Technologies, Microsoft, Feb 29, 2024 · Company release
“Together with 1910, Microsoft is charting a course for a billion-dollar business in AI-driven drug discovery and development.”
Zulfi Alam, Corporate Vice President of Quantum, Microsoft, Feb 29, 2024 · Company release
“we're going to get higher quality drug candidates because we'll need fewer iterations to get to the final molecule that makes it into the clinic and, hopefully, onto the market.”
Jen Nwankwo, quoted by Drug Discovery and Development, Feb 29, 2024 · Independent
“After evaluating several companies in the space, we're betting on 1910 Genetics to bring AI-designed drugs to market.”
Samir Kumar, Managing Director, M12, Mar 26, 2021 · Investor
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, 1910 Genetics Inc.
- Public recordNIH RePORTER, award 1R41NS118992-01
- Public recordSBIR.gov award record, 1910 Genetics Inc.
- Public recordUS20250257051A1, Substituted pyrimidine compounds as tyk2 inhibitors
- Public recordThe Chelate Effect Rationalizes Observed Rate Acceleration and Enantioselectivity in BINOL-Catalyzed Petasis Reactions
- Public recordReport of the National Institutes of Health SARS-CoV-2 Antiviral Therapeutics Summit
- Independent1910 Genetics Raises $26M in Seed and Series A Funding
- Independent1910 Genetics launches to accelerate therapeutics design
- IndependentMicrosoft, 1910 Genetics eye biopharma breakthroughs
- InterviewDisrupting the pharmaceutical drug discovery process
- InterviewDrug Discovery with 1910 Genetics: Knowing Your Tools
- InvestorWelcoming 1910 Genetics to the M12 Portfolio
- IndependentJen Nwankwo, Founder & CEO at 1910 Genetics
- CompanyMicrosoft and 1910 Genetics Partner to Build the Infrastructure Layer for Drug Discovery and Development Using AI and High-Performance Computing
- CompanyAccenture Collaborates with 1910 Genetics to Help Biopharma Companies Transform Drug Discovery with AI
- Company1910 website, home page
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
