Pharma technology · AI drug formulation

Lavo Life Sciences

A Y Combinator startup that sells computer simulations predicting how a drug molecule will crystallize, a step pharma companies otherwise learn by trial and error in the lab. Founded in 2022, it built two years of public federal funding history and then went quiet.

A pill that did not hold its shape

When a drug molecule solidifies into a pill or capsule, it can pack itself into more than one repeating pattern. Chemists call these patterns crystal forms, or polymorphs, and the wrong one can ruin a drug's shelf life, its manufacturability, or how much of it the body actually absorbs. Lavo Life Sciences builds software that tries to predict, on a computer, which crystal form a given drug molecule will take before a chemist ever runs the experiment.

The company's own launch materials point to a well known industry episode to make the case: a recalled HIV drug whose developers, in the company's telling, chose an unstable crystal structure. Whether or not every reader would frame that history the same way, the underlying problem Lavo is chasing, that crystal form selection is expensive and uncertain, is a real and long standing one in pharmaceutical formulation.

The problem it says it is solving

Lavo's pitch, in its own words, is that pharmaceutical companies spend enormous sums screening for crystal forms by brute force. “Pharma companies use our simulations to guide their experiments, saving hundreds of millions of dollars and years of time in the lab,” the company wrote in its Y Combinator launch post. It described existing computational vendors as slow and expensive, “think hundreds of thousands of computer hours for a single molecule,” and positioned its own approach, mixing AI with quantum chemistry, as faster and cheaper. Those are the company's numbers and the company's framing. No independent benchmark of Lavo's software against a named competitor's turned up in this research.

Three founders, one YC batch

Lavo was founded in November 2022, according to its federal SAM.gov registration, by Scott Swarthout, Zach Glick and Derek Metcalf. The company's own launch post describes Zach and Derek as holders of PhDs in computational chemistry and Scott as a former Google Cloud product manager. A Startup Intros profile of Scott Swarthout, drawing on public professional history, describes him as an Associate Product Manager at Google from 2018 to 2021, a co-founder and lead developer at Halcyon Labs from 2015 to 2018, and a graduate of Michigan State University and the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a master's degree in computer science in 2022. The three took the company through Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch. Federal award records list Derek Metcalf as principal investigator on the company's National Science Foundation grants, and the company's performance address on those awards is in Atlanta, Georgia, in Fulton County, even as Startup Intros describes Scott Swarthout as based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

From launch to silence

The public timeline after the 2023 YC launch is thin. A funding database lists a Pre Seed round dated December 15, 2023, with an investor named BBQ Capital, though the amount was not disclosed and no corroborating press release or SEC filing was found. The National Science Foundation awarded Lavo an SBIR Phase I grant of $274,990 in September 2023 for “a physics-based machine learning platform for crystal structure prediction of small drug molecules,” and a Phase II award of $1,213,322 in July 2025 to extend the same project through June 2027. Those two awards, $1.49 million combined, are the only dollar figures in this research with a primary government source behind them. The company's website was still live and describing a product called Crystal Console as recently as February 9, 2026, the last successful Wayback Machine capture found. As of September 25, 2026, lavo.ai does not resolve.

What is proven, and what is still claimed

Read plainly: the only figures in this record with a primary government source are the two NSF grants, $1.49 million total. Everything else, the pre seed round, the revenue estimate, the team size, comes from secondary databases that do not agree with each other or with any filing. The company has never been required to disclose a priced round through SEC Form D, at least not under the name searched here, so the absence of a filing does not by itself prove no money changed hands.

What to watch

• Whether Lavo restores lavo.ai or issues any public statement about its status, since the site was still live in February 2026.
• Whether a Form D or amended filing ever appears for the reported Pre Seed round.
• Activity on NSF award 2451698, which is funded through June 30, 2027 regardless of the company's commercial status.
• Any named pharma partner or customer, none of which turned up in this research.

In their words

Lavo Life Sciences funding profile on HVCFHealthcare Venture Capital Fund

Related companies

• Angstrom AI: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A University of Cambridge spinout building generative AI molecular simulations meant to substitute for wet lab chemistry in early drug development
• Convexia: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A two person, Y Combinator backed startup that wants AI agents to do the job of a pharma business development team: find overlooked drugs, judge them, and eventually
• b12 Labs: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A two person, then three person, chemistry lab in San Francisco building AI agents that plan chemical reactions and hand the resulting protocols to robots
• Persist AI: Also in Drug Discovery and Delivery. A robotic laboratory in West Sacramento that builds and tests long acting injectable formulations by the hundred, rented to drug companies through a web browser

Sources

1. Public recordNSF award abstract, SBIR Phase I, award 2227936National Science Foundation · Sep 13, 2023
2. Public recordNSF award abstract, SBIR Phase II, award 2451698National Science Foundation · Jul 11, 2025
3. Public recordSEC EDGAR full text search for Lavo Life Sciences, zero Form D resultsSEC EDGAR · accessed Sep 25, 2026
4. Public recordLavo Life Sciences federal awardee registration (SAM.gov data)HigherGov · accessed Sep 25, 2026
5. IndependentLavo Life Sciences: AI for drug formulation, company pageY Combinator · accessed Sep 25, 2026
6. CompanyLaunch YC: Lavo Life Sciences, Computer simulations of drug moleculesY Combinator launch post · Feb 2023
7. CompanyLavo Life Sciences website, Accelerate Drug Development with Accurate Crystal Structure PredictionInternet Archive snapshot · Jan 2024
8. CompanyLavo Life Sciences website, Crystal ConsoleInternet Archive snapshot · Feb 9, 2026
9. IndependentScott Swarthout, profile and career historyStartup Intros · accessed Jul 13, 2026
10. IndependentLavo Life Sciences, funding, team and investorsStartup Intros · accessed Jul 13, 2026
11. IndependentLavo Life Sciences LLC, SBIR company profileinknowvation · profile last edited Dec 9, 2023
12. IndependentLavo Life Sciences (AI, Biotechnology): funding, investors and signalsBounce Watch · accessed Nov 14, 2025
13. IndependentLavo Life Sciences revenue and team size estimateGetLatka · accessed Sep 2, 2026