Backers of Tesla and SpaceX fund 29-year-old Alice Zhang's AI-powered neuroscience startup
The battered field of neuroscience has a dogged new player: a team of young, renegade PhDs who say they’re harnessing genomics and artificial intelligence to revive the ailing industry.
The San Francisco venture is called Verge Genomics, and it’s led by a spunky 29-year-old PhD dropout — Alice Zhang — who says she’s determined to push neuroscience R&D out of its decades-long slump. Jumping to her cause is DFJ Ventures, a tech investor who has the likes of Twitter, SpaceX, and Tesla in its portfolio. The VC firm led Verge’s $32 million Series A round, which was announced this morning. It’s not DFJ’s first rodeo in the field, however, as it’s already backed genomics A-listers like Human Longevity and Synthetic Genomics.
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