LigIT (LiTai Intelligent Pharma) said it has closed a seed round of nearly 50 million yuan, jointly invested by iFlytek Venture Capital, L2F Lighthouse Founders’ Fund and other industrial partners, with Lighthouse Capital acting as exclusive financial advisor. The company said the proceeds will be used mainly for core pipeline R&D, computing power investment, patent layout, talent recruitment and daily operations.
LigIT describes itself as an AI-native innovative polypeptide drug R&D enterprise focused on applying generative AI to novel polypeptide design. The company was founded by Dr. Jia Yinjun, a post-98s generation entrepreneur. During his postdoctoral tenure at the Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), Tsinghua University, Dr. Jia published work in top journals including Science and Cell and claims a number of original achievements in AI molecular screening and polypeptide generation. The core team combines expertise in AI algorithms, polypeptide chemistry and drug R&D, supported by a matrix of senior academic and industrial consultants.
AI-native polypeptide platform and technology
LigIT says it has built a three-layer technical system addressing data, model and molecule challenges in polypeptide R&D. The company relies on self-developed, large-scale closed-source polypeptide synthesis datasets, polypeptide generation large models that follow the Scaling Law of large models, and mirror polypeptide generation elements intended to ease the trade-off between polypeptide affinity and in vivo stability.
The company has also developed a 72-hour polypeptide generation–synthesis closed-loop platform that covers AI design, chemical synthesis, biological testing and structural analysis for both linear and cyclic peptides. LigIT reports that the platform has been verified on multiple tumor and metabolism-related targets, which the company says demonstrates the real effectiveness of AI design.
Commercial strategy and partnerships
LigIT operates a dual-engine “Platform + Pipeline” model to pursue short-term technology monetization alongside long-term pipeline value. In the near term the company monetizes technology through platform collaborations and joint R&D; it says it has established cooperation with several listed pharmaceutical companies, biotechnology firms, Class A tertiary hospitals and national key laboratories, and that some projects have entered preclinical testing. Over the long term LigIT focuses on independent development of novel drug pipelines, targeting oncology, autoimmunity and metabolism. The company positions itself as an AI-native pharmaceutical enterprise rather than a pure AI technology service provider, with the stated goal of delivering innovative polypeptide drugs to patients.
Investor and founder statements
Founder Dr. Jia Yinjun said: “The release of AlphaFold2 in 2020 made me intuitively feel the disruptive power of AI on biomedicine. Starting from predicting protein structures, AI can amplify everyone’s scientific research capabilities, and in the future may help us understand more diseases and find corresponding solutions. Polypeptide is a highly potential drug modality, which is expected to challenge many traditional \”undruggable\” targets, and the breakthrough of oral cyclic peptide technology has further opened up a brand new market space. AI is no longer just an auxiliary tool for R&D, but the core driving force of drug design. After this round of financing, the team will continue to iterate the polypeptide generation large model, promote preclinical research of self-owned and cooperative pipelines, actively explore global cooperation, and strive to grow into a China-based AI-native innovative polypeptide pharmaceutical enterprise, so that cutting-edge technologies can benefit more patients.”
Xu Jingming, Chairman of iFlytek Venture Capital said: “With the penetration of artificial intelligence technology, the paradigm of scientific research and development is also undergoing innovation. AI4bio has become the first verified scenario in the AI4S field due to its high data density, high project value, mature IP payment model and other factors, and it is also one of the key directions that iFlytek Venture Capital focuses on in recent years. LigIT chooses polypeptide drugs, a programmable intermediate state between small molecules and antibodies, as the entry point, which has both innovation potential and broad market prospects. Founder Dr. Jia Yinjun has several top journal publications right after graduation, who is innovative and pragmatic. The core team has long-term accumulation in generative AI, de novo polypeptide design and synthesis. We believe that the AI Native concept adhered to by LigIT is expected to become an important driving force to improve the efficiency and success rate of drug R&D, create long-term value for the life and health industry, and become an innovative enterprise with international competitiveness.”
Zheng Xuanle, Founding Partner of L2F Lighthouse Founders’ Fund said: “Polypeptides have attracted attention due to their drug development potential, and AI technology can provide them with scalable design capabilities to accelerate the innovation process. In the future, a number of new companies with AI as the R&D base will emerge in the pharmaceutical industry, accumulating design capabilities through each experiment and forming long-term advantages in continuous iteration. LigIT exactly embodies such potential. The team takes polypeptides as the entry point and extends to the non-natural polypeptide design space, reflecting independent judgment on the technical direction and drug value. From basic research to real drugs, it is necessary to cross the barriers of experiment and transformation. We expect LigIT to transform continuous scientific research accumulation into the ability to continuously produce innovative molecules, and build its own ecological niche in global drug R&D.”
Hong Lei, Head of the Smart Life Sciences Group & Partner of Lighthouse Capital, and Jiang Xiang, Executive Director said: “We are very glad to help the company complete the seed round financing. AI pharma is moving from auxiliary drug discovery to native molecular design. Relying on its own polypeptide data asset base, LigIT takes the polypeptide generation large model with continuous iteration and scalable expansion capabilities as the core, and achieves zero-to-one breakthroughs in cutting-edge directions such as mirror polypeptide design. We are optimistic about the company’s differentiated advantages in model and synthesis capabilities, and also look forward to LigIT linking high-quality capital in the future and growing into a benchmark enterprise in the AI-native polypeptide drug sector.”
Huang Xuequn, Executive Director of L2F Lighthouse Founders’ Fund said: “The important opportunity of AI for Science lies in breaking through the long-standing R&D bottlenecks of the industry, so that scientific discovery has the ability of continuous iteration and large-scale expansion. Polypeptide is a key entry point. With the interdisciplinary background of medicine, life science and AI, the team connects technical exploration with real drug demands, and forms systematic accumulation in data construction, generation models and experimental verification: expanding the model learning space through synthetic data, improving molecular design capabilities, and extending to D-type mirror peptides. We expect the team to build an AI-native platform that continuously produces original drugs, and transform China’s scientific research innovation into globally competitive industrial value.”
