Drug delivery · Formulation automation
Persist AI
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. Two venture rounds, three named partners, one peer-reviewed paper.
Four hours in a chair
Karthik Raman used to drive his mother to her infusions. She had brain cancer. They would sit for four hours while the drug went into her veins, and she would be sick and lose her hair. He was already a drug delivery scientist: his doctorate at the University of Utah was on sustained release into the brain.
“I built Persist to eradicate this horrible experience for future patients,” he wrote later on his company page at Y Combinator.
The fix he has in mind is old and unglamorous. Instead of dripping a drug in over hours, encapsulate it in tiny polymer spheres, inject it once, and let it leak out over weeks or a year. The chemistry is well known. Finding the right recipe is the slow part.
Why a recipe takes years
Long acting injectables mostly rest on PLGA and PLA, biodegradable polyesters that have carried depot drugs for decades. A 2021 review in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences sets out the difficulty: molecular weight, end group, the lactide to glycolide ratio and minor manufacturing changes all move release profile, particle size, encapsulation efficiency and the activity of the protein inside. Proteins also dislike the process itself, with its organic solvent, shear and temperature swings.
So teams change one variable, wait days or weeks for a release test, and change another. Persist says a typical group manages ten to twenty formulations a month.
The pull on the other side has grown hard to ignore. Cabotegravir brought a monthly HIV prevention injection to market in 2021. On June 18, 2025 the FDA approved Gilead’s lenacapavir, sold as Yeztugo, as twice yearly prevention, on trial data in which at least 99.9 percent of participants stayed HIV negative. Semaglutide made weekly injection ordinary for diabetes and obesity. Each of those is a known molecule, delivered differently.
Two automation engineers
Raman and Christopher Shelner met on the automation team at Zymergen, where Raman helped build a modular robotic laboratory for synthetic biology. Shelner came from Northrop Grumman and Apple. Spero Ventures says the pair bootstrapped an earlier company, Papyrus, before deciding formulation was the more interesting problem. They incorporated in Delaware in 2022, went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2023 batch, and settled in the Sacramento valley rather than the Bay Area.
The money, and the order it arrived in
The first hard record is a Form D filed with the SEC on April 24, 2023. It reports a first sale on April 13, an offering of $5,470,484 in equity and simple agreements for future equity, $4,888,484 already sold, and 27 investors. Raman signed it as chief executive.
The press release came 102 days later. On August 4, 2023 the company announced “an oversubscribed $4M financing round” led by 2048 Ventures. The filed number is roughly $900,000 larger than the announced one.
In August 2024 Persist and Nivagen Pharmaceuticals, a Sacramento company with sterile injectable lines, said they would co-develop a manufacturing process for long acting injectables. In May 2025 came Cloud Lab, a portal through which a client designs experiments that Persist robots run, and a $12 million Series A led by Spero Ventures in which Eli Lilly and Company took part. In February 2026 Persist and CyanoCapture said they would build a robotic GMP facility for oral protein and peptide drugs, operational by the fourth quarter of 2026. In June 2026 Persist, Microsize and Micromacinazione announced a milligram scale platform for early micronization decisions.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| SEC Form D | Filed Apr 24, 2023, CIK 0001974261. First sale Apr 13, 2023. Offered $5,470,484, sold $4,888,484, 27 investors, Rule 506(b), equity plus SAFEs. Related persons: Karthik Raman and Christopher Shelner, each officer and director. | Public record |
| Peer-reviewed data | One paper, Pharmaceuticals, Aug 1, 2026, co-authored by Persist staff and two AstraZeneca scientists. An automated water in oil in water workflow made 129 IgG loaded microsphere formulations. Loading ran in the low to mid single digit percent range. | Public record |
| Limits in that paper | Release was followed for 7 days with one model antibody, and day 7 differences weakened after correction for variance and resampling. | Public record |
| Throughput claims | 700 formulations built and tested in two months for an unnamed major pharmaceutical client, against an industry rate the company puts at 10 to 15 a month. Capacity of over 1,000 a month. Experiments 30 times faster than manual work. | Company-stated |
| Commercial traction | Multiple top ten pharmaceutical clients, none named. An investor wrote in May 2025 that Persist had signed or was negotiating over $6 million in contracts across 21 active projects. | Investor-stated |
| Named partners | Nivagen (Aug 2024), CyanoCapture (Feb 2026), Microsize and Micromacinazione (Jun 2026). AstraZeneca appears as a co-author, not as a named customer. | Partner-stated |
| The timeline claim moves | YC page and 2023 seed release: five years cut to two. 2025 Series A release: years to months. Company blog the same day: formulation can take 8 to 12 years. Spero Ventures: two years down to 6 to 8 weeks. | Claims differ |
| Patents | No granted patent or published application found under either company name in a Google Patents search on Sep 24, 2026. | Not found |
| Federal money | No NIH award in RePORTER and no matching NSF award, searched Sep 24, 2026. | Not found |
Read plainly: the platform is real enough to have produced 129 antibody microsphere formulations alongside AstraZeneca scientists and to have pulled a strategic check from Eli Lilly. What is not public is a named customer, a drug that reached a clinic on a Persist formulation, or a patent staking out the robotics. The one dataset in the literature covers seven days of release from one antibody, and its own authors say so.
What to watch
- Whether the CyanoCapture facility is operating by the end of 2026 as announced.
- A second paper, or release data past seven days.
- Any named client, or a drug entering the clinic with a Persist formulation.
- A patent filing. A services business with no protected process is easier to copy.
- A new Form D. The $12 million Series A of May 2025 has none on file.
In their words
“I built Persist to eradicate this horrible experience for future patients.”
Karthik Raman, co-founder and CEO, Y Combinator company page · Founder
“We complete microsphere pre-formulation for clients in weeks, not years”
Karthik Raman, seed round release, August 2023 · Company release
“AI is enabling pharma to discover new molecules faster than ever. But a molecule that has poor shelf life cannot become a drug product that sits on a shelf.”
Karthik Raman, Series A release, May 2025 · Company release
“At most, groups I’ve worked with can make 20 formulations in a month.”
An unnamed formulation scientist, quoted by Persist AI, May 2025 · Company blog
“Drug formulation has long been overlooked despite being a crucial part of drug development.”
Alex Iskold, managing partner, 2048 Ventures, 2023 · Investor
“Persist dramatically reduces both the time and cost at every stage of development, ultimately lowering the hurdle for investment in next-generation therapeutics like long-acting injectables.”
Sara Eshelman, general partner, Spero Ventures, 2025 · Investor
“We believe that their technology can significantly reduce the time and cost of developing and producing long-acting injectables, which are a growing and underserved market.”
Jay Shukla, CEO, Nivagen Pharmaceuticals, August 2024 · Partner release
“the results should be interpreted as an early-stage formulation screening study rather than definitive evidence of long-term antibody depot performance”
Tyagi and colleagues, Pharmaceuticals, August 2026 · Peer reviewed
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm D, Persist AI Formulations Corp, CIK 0001974261
- Public recordEDGAR full text search and submissions API for Persist AI
- Public recordExploration of Development Parameters for IgG Microspheres Using an Automated Platform
- Public recordNIH RePORTER search for Persist AI, no awards
- Public recordGoogle Patents assignee search, no results
- Public recordYeztugo (lenacapavir) approved for twice yearly HIV prevention
- Public recordClinical Recommendation for Injectable Lenacapavir as HIV Preexposure Prophylaxis
- Public recordPLGA/PLA-Based Long-Acting Injectable Depot Microspheres in Clinical Use
- IndependentPersist AI secures $12M Series A funding, unveils Cloud Lab platform
- IndependentPersist AI Launches Robotic Cloud Lab for Formulation Development
- IndependentLong-Acting Drug Start-Up Raises $4M in Seed Funds
- IndependentStartups to Watch: Persist AI looks to cut drug development time
- InvestorWhy We Invested in Persist AI
- InvestorOur Investment in Persist AI
- InvestorAccelerating the Future of Pharma
- CompanyPersist AI Launches Cloud Lab, Raises $12M Series A Funding
- CompanyPersist AI Raises $4M in Seed Financing
- PartnerPersist AI and Nivagen to Collaborate on AI-Driven Manufacturing Process
- PartnerCyanoCapture and Persist AI Announce Strategic Collaboration
- CompanyBeyond the $12M, and the Persist AI website
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
