Funding profile · Pharmaceutical formulation services

Persist AI

Sixteen million dollars announced across two rounds, one Form D on file, and a strategic check from Eli Lilly. The single filing reports more money sold than the round it belongs to was later announced at.

$16.0MAnnounced across the 2023 seed and the 2025 Series A, company-reported
$4.89MSold of $5.47M offered on the only Form D, filed April 2023
27Investors in that offering, about $181,000 each
$0Federal grant dollars found at NIH or NSF

Data as of September 24, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Winter 2023 Y Combinator batch Standard YC pre-seed, reported as $500,000 Y Combinator Independent
Apr 2023 Regulation D offering, equity and SAFEs $5,470,484 offered, $4,888,484 sold 27 investors, unnamed in the filing Form D
Aug 2023 Seed, as announced $4M 2048 Ventures (lead), Innospark Ventures, Fellows Fund, Pioneer Fund, Y Combinator; Jovono per MobiHealthNews Company release
May 2025 Series A, oversubscribed $12M Spero Ventures (lead), Eli Lilly and Company, MBX Capital, Shimadzu Future Innovation Fund managed by Global Brain, SignalFire, Ford Street Capital, Purdue Ventures, Good AI Capital, Cartography Capital, Asymmetry Ventures, 2048 Ventures, Innospark, Y Combinator Company release
2022 to 2026 Federal grants and contracts None found NIH RePORTER and NSF searched Sep 24, 2026 Not found

What the filings show

Persist AI Formulations Corp · Form D · filed Apr 24, 2023

First sale
Apr 13, 2023
Offered
$5,470,484, equity and simple agreements for future equity
Sold
$4,888,484 · $582,000 remaining
Investors
27 · average about $181,000 · no non-accredited investors
Exemption
Rule 506(b)
Related persons
Karthik Raman (executive officer, director); Christopher Shelner (executive officer, director)
Other terms
Delaware, incorporated 2022 · industry group Pharmaceuticals · revenue range declined · no sales commissions or finders fees · offering under one year
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001974261, accession 0001974261-23-000001

Reading the filings

  1. The filing is bigger than the round it became.The Form D reports $4,888,484 sold by April 24, 2023. The seed announcement 102 days later called it an oversubscribed $4M round. The filed figure is about $888,000 higher, roughly 22 percent above the announced number, and no amended Form D has been filed to reconcile them.
  2. The checks are angel sized, not fund sized.$4,888,484 across 27 investors averages about $181,000 each. Combined with the use of SAFEs, that is the shape of a syndicate topped by one lead, which matches 2048 Ventures leading with four named co-investors and, in the company’s words, others.
  3. Ten percent of the offering never sold.$582,000 of the $5,470,484 offered was still open at filing, about 10.6 percent. The offering was declared as lasting less than a year, so it has long since closed at whatever it reached.
  4. The $12 million Series A has no Form D.An EDGAR full text search on September 24, 2026 returns exactly one Persist filing, the 2023 notice. Issuers that sell under Section 4(a)(2) rather than Regulation D file nothing, so the absence is not evidence that the round did not happen. It does mean the only figure for the Series A is the company’s own.
  5. The board of record is two founders.The filing lists Karthik Raman and Christopher Shelner as the only related persons, each an executive officer and a director. No investor director appears in any filing, before or after the Series A, because there is no later filing.
  6. One investor is a customer class.Eli Lilly and Company took part in the Series A, and Purdue Ventures alongside it. For a business that sells formulation work to large pharmaceutical companies, a strategic investor of that kind is a commercial signal as much as a financial one, and it is the closest thing to a named pharmaceutical relationship on the record besides the AstraZeneca co-authored paper.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Product Cloud Lab launched May 2025: clients commission robotic formulation experiments through a web portal, fee for service, with formulation intellectual property assigned to the client. Company-stated
Customers Multiple top ten pharmaceutical clients and smaller biotechs, none named. Company-stated
Contracted revenue Over $6 million signed or in negotiation across 21 active projects, as described by Good AI Capital in May 2025. Investor-stated
Manufacturing Nivagen Pharmaceuticals, Sacramento, for a GMP long acting injectable line (Aug 2024). CyanoCapture robotic GMP facility for oral biologics, targeted at the fourth quarter of 2026 (Feb 2026). Partner-stated
Technical evidence One peer-reviewed paper, Pharmaceuticals, August 2026, co-authored with AstraZeneca scientists: 129 IgG microsphere formulations, 7 days of release data. Public record
Intellectual property No granted patent or published application found on Sep 24, 2026. Not found

What to watch

  • A Form D for the Series A or for any round after it. One is due within 15 days of a first sale under Regulation D.
  • An amended 2023 Form D, which would settle the $4.89 million against $4 million question.
  • Whether the CyanoCapture facility opens on the announced fourth quarter 2026 schedule, since it commits capital to bricks rather than robots.
  • Named customers, disclosed revenue, or a royalty-bearing contract of the sort investors have described.
  • A first patent filing, or a second peer-reviewed dataset with release measured past seven days.

The Persist AI story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Diffuse Bio: Shared investor: Fellows Fund. A Y Combinator company founded by one of the researchers who first pointed diffusion models at proteins
  • Cytera CellWorks, now Mytos: Shared investor: M Series A Fund. A London company that builds machines to grow human cells without a human touching them
  • BluumBio: Shared investor: Asymmetry Ventures. A four-person Berkeley company making microbial products that eat industrial pollution
  • Catena Biosciences: Shared investor: Mbx Capital. A UC Berkeley spinout that uses an engineered tyrosinase to weld two proteins together through their native amino acids, now aimed at antibody drug conjugates carrying

Sources

  1. Public recordForm D, Persist AI Formulations Corp, CIK 0001974261SEC · Apr 24, 2023
  2. Public recordEDGAR full text search and submissions API for Persist AISEC · run Sep 24, 2026
  3. Public recordNIH RePORTER search and Google Patents search, no resultsRun Sep 24, 2026
  4. Public recordExploration of Development Parameters for IgG Microspheres Using an Automated Platform for High-Throughput Formulation ScreeningPharmaceuticals (Basel) · Aug 1, 2026
  5. IndependentPersist AI secures $12M Series A funding, unveils Cloud Lab platformMobiHealthNews · May 22, 2025
  6. IndependentPersist AI Raises $12M in Series A FundingFinSMEs · May 19, 2025
  7. IndependentPersist AI Launches Robotic Cloud Lab for Formulation Development, Raises $12M Series ABiopharmaTrend · May 26, 2025
  8. IndependentLong-Acting Drug Start-Up Raises $4M in Seed FundsScience and Enterprise · Aug 4, 2023
  9. InvestorAccelerating the Future of Pharma: Our Investment in Persist AIGood AI Capital · May 23, 2025
  10. InvestorWhy We Invested in Persist AISpero Ventures · May 19, 2025
  11. CompanyPersist AI Launches Cloud Lab, Raises $12M Series A FundingPR Newswire · May 19, 2025
  12. CompanyPersist AI Raises $4M in Seed FinancingPR Newswire · Aug 4, 2023
  13. PartnerCyanoCapture and Persist AI Announce Strategic CollaborationPR Newswire · Feb 18, 2026
  14. PartnerPersist AI and Nivagen to Collaborate on AI-Driven Manufacturing ProcessPR Newswire · Aug 12, 2024

Compiled from SEC, NIH, NSF and patent office records and published reports as of September 24, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date and may not capture later sales. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Persist AI. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.