Origin

AI for safer cell & gene therapies

Winter 2026ActiveHealthcareDrug Discovery and DeliveryAI-powered Drug DiscoveryGene TherapyCell TherapyBiotechSan Francisco, CA, USA

Company

https://origin.bio

Designing novel regulatory DNA (e.g., enhancers and promoters) to program precise therapeutic gene expression patterns - for diseases like cancer, CNS disorders and more. We're building the largest proprietary dataset of synthetic regulatory sequences across diverse cell-states.

Verdict

High Signal

Market Opportunity

Cell and gene therapy is a multi-billion dollar market with massive unmet need in safety and precision of gene expression. Regulatory DNA design (enhancers/promoters) is a foundational bottleneck for every gene therapy company. ICP is clear: biotech/pharma companies developing AAV-based or cell therapies for cancer, CNS disorders, and rare diseases. Licensing proprietary synthetic regulatory sequences or platform access to pharma is a proven monetization model (cf. Dyno Therapeutics).

Medium Signal

Founder Signal

Both founders are CS undergrads from UIUC with research backgrounds — Malhar was ML Research at Wadhwani AI and worked at Automorphic (YC S23), and published disease modeling research in Nature Scientific Reports while in high school, a genuinely impressive signal. Yash won First Prize at the 2022 OpenCV AI Research Competition. Neither has industry experience beyond student research and one prior YC startup stint; no PhDs or biotech industry credentials. Strong technical promise but thin professional experience for a deep biotech play.

Medium Signal

Competition

Dyno Therapeutics (backed by Atlas, Andreessen) and Evozyne are direct competitors in AI-designed functional DNA/protein elements for gene therapy. Arbor Biotechnologies and Tessera Therapeutics also operate adjacently. Origin's stated differentiation is the largest proprietary dataset of synthetic regulatory sequences across diverse cell-states, but this claim is unverified and dataset moats take years to build. Scientific advisors (Kellis/MIT Broad, Paulk/UCSF) are credible and overlap with Dyno's advisory network, which is both validating and a signal of how competitive this space is.

Medium Signal

Product

They've shipped a named AI model called 'Axis' (announced Oct 2025) described as the first AI model that generates regulatory DNA elements and predicts their function. Active technical blog with ML benchmarking posts (Muon vs Adam for regulatory DNA modeling, March 2026) signals real R&D progress. However, no named customers, no revenue metrics, no pricing page, and the live demo on the homepage has an 'Error loading structure' — product is early stage.

OverallB Tier

Origin is attacking a real and important problem — precise gene expression control is a fundamental bottleneck in gene therapy — with a technically credible approach and strong scientific advisors. The Axis model launch and active ML benchmarking blog show genuine product development, not vaporware. The core risk is team maturity: both founders are UIUC CS undergrads with research backgrounds but no deep biotech industry experience, no PhDs, and no prior exits — thin credentials for a field where biology domain expertise and pharma BD relationships matter enormously. No customer traction or revenue evidence exists yet. If they can close even one pharma partnership or licensing deal, this becomes significantly more interesting.

Active Founders

Malhar Bhide

Founder

CTO @ Origin | Prev: Computer Science @ UIUC, ML Research @ Wadhwani AI, Automorphic (YC S23). Published disease modeling research done in high school in Nature Scientific Reports.

Yash Rathod

Founder

CEO @ Origin | Computer Science @ UIUC, Computer Vision and Reinforcement Learning Research, First Prize 2022 OpenCV AI Research Competition.

Origin

TierB Tier

BatchWinter 2026

Team Size4

StatusActive

LocationSan Francisco, CA, USA