Teen founders raise $6M to reinvent pesticides using AI — and convince Paul Graham to join in

Bindwell, founded by two teenagers, raised $6M to use AI for pesticide discovery. The startup applies drug discovery techniques to agriculture, using models like a fine-tuned AlphaFold to identify target proteins and screen billions of molecules. Instead of selling AI tools to agrochemical companies, Bindwell designs new pesticide molecules in-house and licenses the IP directly. The company aims to address pest resistance and reduce chemical use by creating more targeted compounds from scratch.