Mendra has come out of stealth mode with an $82 million Series A fundraising round, which it plans to use to bring rare disease therapeutics to as many people as possible with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
The biotech launched in stealth mode in San Francisco in 2025 and is drawing on the expertise of its CEO Joshua Grass and its commercial lead Jeff Ajer who helped build and launch BioMarin’s rare-disease portfolio. Grass also ran Escient Pharmaceuticals from 2022 until its acquisition by Incyte in 2024, giving him recent experience taking a biotech from growth stage to exit.
Funds from the oversubscribed Series A, led by healthcare and life science investors OrbiMed, 8VC, and 5AM Ventures and contributed to by Lux Capital and Wing VC, will go towards building the company’s rare disease portfolio. In addition to founding Mendra and acting as CEO, Grass is also a part-time venture partner at 5AM Ventures.
The company wants to use AI as well as the expertise of its team to speed up development, approval, and global commercialization of therapies for small, underserved patient populations.
Rather than developing everything in house from scratch, Mendra plans to systematically scan, score, and acquire rare‑disease assets that are currently in academia, small biotechs, or big pharma portfolios, using AI to prioritize where it can add value. By doing this the company hopes to boost promising therapeutic candidates that have initial data but limited development resources onto the next stage of development.
“We are building Mendra to deliver high-potential rare disease medicines more effectively to patients on a global scale,” said Grass, in a press statement.
“By combining deep rare disease expertise with AI-driven capabilities across asset selection, clinical development, and global commercialization—some of the greatest challenges in rare disease drug development—we believe we can accelerate timelines, improve execution and expand access for these underserved patients.”
Mendra is not the first company to apply AI to rare disease therapy development, companies like Healx, Deep Intelligent Pharma, and Citizen Health are all in this space but focus more on in-house discovery, drug repurposing, or data collection for use by others.
Mendra does not currently have a pipeline but is hoping to bring at least one drug candidate in house this year using the funds from its Series A.
