Ten63 Therapeutics, an artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery startup rooted in the Durham and Chapel Hill corridor, has pulled in fresh backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as part of a new financing round that the company says pushes its total haul past $45 million. The new money is set to fuel Ten63’s BEYOND computational platform and bolster work on HPV and other historically “undruggable” disease targets.
Ten63 seals strategic financing round
Ten63 detailed the new round, which includes the Chugai Venture Fund alongside the Gates Foundation, in a press release on PR Newswire. The company said the raise lifts its total funding to more than $45 million and expands its roster of institutional investors.
CEO Marcel Frenkel cast the financing as another step toward what Ten63 dubs a “drug-discovery superintelligence,” describing BEYOND as a platform that can simulate trillions of potential molecules with accuracy the company says is close to what you would expect at the lab bench.
Gates grant zeroes in on HPV
The Gates Foundation’s committed-grants page lists an earlier award to Ten63 from September 2025, totaling $2,685,806, to develop low-cost small-molecule therapeutics for human papillomavirus. Those therapies are intended to be scalable in low and middle income countries. The grant fits neatly with the foundation’s established push to cut cervical cancer deaths through accessible diagnostics and treatments, and Ten63 says the latest financing will be aligned with that broader global-health agenda.
Local funding picture comes into focus
The Triangle Business Journal has reported that Ten63 had already raised more than $22 million before this latest deal, so the new disclosure marks a clear step up in the company’s capital base. According to PR Newswire, the fresh mix of strategic and philanthropic funding is meant to scale BEYOND and support expanded lab operations around the Triangle.
From campus roots to a growing pipeline
Spun out of Duke University and the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago, Ten63 has been building hybrid physics-and-AI models to go after targets many pharmaceutical players have long written off. The company closed a $15.9 million Series A round in 2023 as it pushed forward a lead Myc inhibitor program.
BioSpace and local partners note that Ten63 has been adding structural biology and chemistry talent and building out wet-lab capacity in the Triangle, with the goal of turning promising computational “hits” into experimentally validated drug candidates.
Why the Triangle keeps showing up in biotech headlines
The deal highlights how the Research Triangle’s mix of universities, local venture groups and mission-driven funders is increasingly backing deep-tech life science startups rather than just the usual software suspects. Duke Capital Partners has chronicled Ten63’s campus origins and its plans for local lab space, while Gates Foundation leaders have been signaling a growing interest in using AI as an accelerant for global-health research and delivery.
What comes next for Ten63 and RTP
Ten63 says it will put the new capital to work scaling the BEYOND platform, moving its internal oncology programs ahead and striking partnerships to shepherd computational candidates into chemistry and biology testing. If the company hits those milestones, local biotech watchers say the round could translate into more hiring and expanded lab space across downtown Durham and Research Triangle Park, as cloud-based computation feeds directly into hands-on drug development.
