Beyond the Purpose: Murat Tunaboylu on funding, resilience and building for purpose

Episode two of Beyond the Purpose features Murat Tunaboylu, CEO of Antiverse, a tech bio company applying AI to drug discovery. Hosted by James Cox, Founder & CEO at BioTalent, and Jay Webster, Managing Partner at BioX, the conversation looks past the milestone of Antiverse's recent Series A to the decisions, pressure and personal stakes behind it.

What this episode covers

In this episode, Murat unpacks Antiverse's recent $9.3 million Series A, a fundraising process that ran from May to January. He describes running a structured, criteria-led process, scoring around 300 investors against factors including sector understanding, pharma connections and the ability to lead or participate in a round, and makes the case against relying solely on warm introductions, noting that several of Antiverse's existing investors came through cold outreach.

He speaks candidly about the stress that comes with fundraising and building a company over nearly a decade, including a stress-related health episode in 2022. He credits Antiverse's culture of transparency, sharing runway and financial position openly with the whole team, with building trust and giving employees the information to make their own decisions during uncertain periods.

The conversation also covers where Murat sees the tech bio sector heading: the shift from first-generation AI drug discovery companies towards models that address toxicity and efficacy data earlier, and the possibility of process-based regulatory approval reshaping how long a molecule's route to market takes. He also discusses why hubs like Boston and Silicon Valley continue to concentrate tech bio investment, even as technical talent becomes more distributed globally.

He closes with advice for first-time founders: build in a financial buffer before leaving stable employment and be certain of the mission before committing to the process because without it, the difficulty involved is hard to sustain.

Listen and subscribe

Listen to episode two on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or visit the BioX podcast page to stay tuned for future episodes.

To learn more about how BioX helps organisations secure the leaders who drive performance across the full drug development life cycle, visit BioX.