Shanghai-based Anew Labs, the AI drug discovery company spun off from ByteDance’s internal AI-for-biology unit, closed a $290 million inaugural external round on September 16, 2026, valuing the business at $1.5 billion. TikTok’s parent retains a 56% stake after the spin-off, according to sources cited by Reuters.
An AI Lab Steps Out From Under TikTok’s Parent
Anew Labs was carved out of ByteDance’s internal life-sciences group, which for years used the company’s deep infrastructure for training foundation models on protein structure, molecular dynamics and clinical data. Standing on its own, the startup is chasing small-molecule and biologics programs where AI can compress hit-to-lead cycles and slash preclinical timelines.
The round was led by HSG (formerly Sequoia China) with participation from IDG Capital, Hillhouse Investment and 5Y Capital. ByteDance’s 56% retained stake means Anew Labs enters the AI-biotech race with unusually deep model-training resources and access to the parent’s roughly $600 billion internal valuation base.
China’s AI-Biotech Bench Deepens
The deal underlines how quickly China’s AI-biotech bench is deepening. It follows other cross-border AI-plus-drug rounds tracked this month by The Robotics Media, including Nutshell Therapeutics’ Series C1 for allosteric drug discovery and Graph AI’s $13.3M Series A for pharmacovigilance.
Why Investors Are Paying \$1.5B For A First Round
Investors are effectively pricing Anew Labs on the compute and data infrastructure it inherits from ByteDance. Whereas peer AI-biotech firms spend the first cheque on GPU capacity, Anew Labs starts with a bill-of-materials that most Series A biotechs cannot match. Comparable European infrastructure deals such as EUCLYD’s \$231M Series A and healthcare rounds like Tandem Health’s \$100M Series B reflect the premium for AI-native operating leverage.
Reporting based on coverage from Reuters, Finimize, Caproasia, The Next Web and PANews.