Valthos

Valthos is an applied biological intelligence company founded in 2024 to develop frontier AI systems for biodefense. Its platform draws on biological data from government and commercial sources, including air and wastewater monitoring, to identify emerging biological threats, analyse biological sequences and assess risk, and to adapt existing medicines in response to pathogens. The stated goal is to compress the countermeasure response time from months to hours. The company emerged from stealth in late 2024 with $30 million in funding, with OpenAI, Lux Capital and Founders Fund among its investors. Technical work spans frontier AI and machine learning, computational biology, biological sequence analysis, biosurveillance, medical countermeasure design, and drug adaptation and repurposing, alongside software engineering. The company serves the biodefense and biosecurity, government and public health, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors. Valthos was founded by Kathleen McMahon, formerly head of life sciences at Palantir Technologies, and Tess van Stekelenburg, a partner at Lux Capital. It describes its team as a group of computational biologists and software engineers drawn from Palantir, DeepMind, MIT's Broad Institute and the Arc Institute. The company is actively recruiting.