ByteDance's AI Drug Discovery Spinout Anew Labs Closes First Outside Round, Reported Between $187.6 Million and $290 Million

Anew Labs, the AI drug discovery business that ByteDance spun out in June, has completed its first outside financing — and the reported terms vary depending on who is counting. Industry funding tracker Dealroom's headline puts the Series A at \$290 million at a \$1.5 billion post-money valuation, while the report body, citing Reuters, lists \$187.6 million at \$970.6 million. The company's official announcement did not disclose either figure. Chinese media reports describe the round as roughly US\$290 million, or about 2 billion yuan.

What the sources agree on is the investor list: HSG (formerly Sequoia China), IDG Capital and Hillhouse Investment led the round, with 5Y Capital as co-lead. Gaorong Ventures, Primavera Venture Partners, Boyu Capital, SBP Group and the state-backed Shanghai Future Industries Fund also joined, and Chinese reports add Sino Biopharmaceutical as a strategic investor. ByteDance retains a 56 percent stake, making Anew one of the few ByteDance units to take outside capital at scale.

Anew Labs is based in Shanghai and grew out of an effort ByteDance began quietly around 2020, formalizing a dedicated AI-for-drug-discovery team in 2021 of roughly 50 people led by Kai Liu, mixing AI researchers and veteran pharmaceutical scientists. The unit built Protenix, an open protein structure prediction model it iterated to a second version this year, along with Seedfold and PXDesign, a protein binder design tool — together forming an end-to-end platform that runs from structure prediction through candidate design.

The platform has produced four drug candidates so far. In April 2026, the team appeared at the American Association of Immunologists annual meeting with a preclinical small molecule that it described as the first to block the full IL-17 family — targets central to psoriasis and other autoimmune diseases — a notable claim for a company better known for running a short-video empire.

The financing is the latest sign that China's big tech companies are pushing deeper into life sciences, where AI-native discovery startups have been raising at a record pace. It also fits a pattern of ByteDance letting non-core businesses raise their own money: the spinout structure lets Anew hire, partner with pharmaceutical companies and pursue clinical development without tying up ByteDance's balance sheet.

The open question is whether the models translate into molecules that survive trials. Protenix competes in structure prediction, where DeepMind's AlphaFold set the standard, and Anew's four candidates remain early-stage. With roughly \$190-290 million in the bank — depending on whose number is right — Anew now has to show that a discovery engine built inside a consumer internet company can produce medicines a pharmaceutical partner will pay for.

Sources: Dealroom, Clinical Research News Online, Chinese media reports. Figures for the round size and valuation were not disclosed by the company; both reported sets are listed above.