Los Altos, California, United States
Mark DePristo was the founding CEO of BigHat Biosciences from 2019 to 2025, a Bay Area startup developing safer, more effective antibody therapies for patients using machine learning and synthetic biology. Mark founded and led the Genomics team in Google Brain, was Vice President of Informatics at SynapDx, and co-director of Medical and Population Genetics at the Broad Institute. He has a BA in Computer Science and Math from Northwestern University, a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar, and was a Damon Runyon Fellow at Harvard University in evolutionary biology. Dr. DePristo's academic articles are widely published and have received over 130,000 citations.
BigHat Biosciences (www.bighatbio.com) designs safer, more effective biologic therapies for patients using machine learning and synthetic biology. BigHat uses a novel high-speed ML-enabled lab to develop new generations of better biologics for today’s most challenging diseases. As of 2025, BigHat has a pipeline of wholly-owned and partnered therapies in areas such as cancer, inflammation, and neuroscience, with the first antibodies entering clinical development in 2026. As the founding CEO, I led the company as we: * Raised >$130M from top investors, including Section 32, a16z, and 8VC from the seed to Series B. * Partnered with leading biopharmas like Amgen, Merck, AbbVie, and J&J, generating $100M+ in near-term revenues and >$1B in downstream milestones and royalties. * Built the company from the founding team to over 100 full-time employees. * Conceived of and oversaw the implementation of BigHat’s novel AI + synbio platform that can synthesize 2000+ antibodies each week, comprehensively measure their properties, and learn from that data with AI to ultimately create better biologics faster. * Won many startup awards, including a Fierce 15 from Fierce Biotech (2024), Business Insider's 2023 most promising Generative AI Startups, and UCSF Digital Health Award (2022)
Developer of a medical platform intended to make pregnancy safe by delivering insights to moms and families. The company's offerings include predictive tests and pregnancy management, enabling patients to identify at-risk pregnancies and facilitating new therapeutic approaches.