# Anto
Anto is a frontier biology AI lab making the gut microbiome computable for the first time. We build multimodal foundation models for microbial communities to predict drug toxicity and efficacy. Backed by Y Combinator (F25).

## Key Links
- [Home](https://anto.bio)
- [Research](https://anto.bio/research)
- [Publications](https://anto.bio/publications)
- [Team](https://anto.bio/team)
- [Careers](https://anto.bio/work-with-us)

## Contact
- founders@anto.bio

## Mission
We are making the gut microbiome computable. Over 1 billion people take drugs where the gut microbiome dictates success or failure. Current drug development treats the microbiome as noise. We treat it as signal.

## The Technology
We develop novel sparsification and tokenization methods to unlock unprecedented amounts of microbiome data, build foundation models for microbial communities, and translate discoveries into frontier research and clinical outcomes.

### Core Approaches
- **Sparsification:** We remove ~99% of noise from microbiome data to isolate the ~1% that carries predictive power.
- **Foundation Models:** We build multimodal foundation models for microbial communities.
- **Lab-in-the-Loop:** We couple large-scale multi-omics with 100,000+ interventional trajectories and AI-guided lab-in-the-loop validation.

## The Darwin Model Series
Our "Darwin" model series enables the prediction of drug toxicity and efficacy across diverse populations and optimizes molecules for broader efficacy—addressing the hidden, microbiome-driven causes of drug response and failure.

## Research & Publications
We publish in leading AI x biology x microbiome venues. Key works include:
- **AI-Controlled Metagenomics:** High-throughput taxonomic profiling for clinical pathogen detection and early-stage cancer screening.
- **Metatrinity (From Noise to Knowledge):** Enabling foundation-model pretraining on noisy, real-world corpora.
- **Steering the Evolutionary Game:** Approaches to guide microbial evolution.
- **Foundation Models for Microbial Communities:** The first multimodal foundation model combining genomics, metabolomics, and clinical data.

## Leadership
- **Arvid E. Gollwitzer (Founder):** Researcher at Broad, Harvard, MIT. Lecturer at ETH Zurich.
- **David de Gruijl (Founder):** ETH Zurich, Harvard Medical School, J&J. Pharmacology x Gastroenterology.

## Investors
Y Combinator, Massive Tech Ventures, Ritual Capital, RRE, Horizon VC, Standard Partners.

## Location
In-person team based in San Francisco.