Bindwell
We're building better pesticides using AI. The agrochemical industry is stagnant, it's time for a change. Backed by Y Combinator, General Catalyst, SV Angel, A.Capital, Character, Paul Graham, and others.
The founders [of Bindwell] will probably do alright. They're smart and have a good idea. Paul Graham, on X
Team
We're Tyler Rose (Wolfram Research) and Navvye Anand (Caltech), a scrappy duo of engineers who met at the Wolfram Summer Research Program in June 2023. We're from China and India, respectively, and both close to farmlands in our countries. United by our passion for tackling global problems, we dropped out of high school / college and started Bindwell to transform the agrochemical industry.
Problem
Pesticides are failing us: their usage has doubled since 2000, even though farmland has decreased1, 2. Yet, we still lose 20–40% of crops to pests3,4,5.
Resistance makes things worse: pests evolve resistance, forcing farmers to use even more pesticides to get the same results. This creates a vicious cycle of increasing resistance and collateral damage.
Innovation is stagnant: since the 2010s, fewer than 40 new active ingredients have been introduced6. Most "new" pesticides are just minor tweaks of existing chemicals.
Industry left behind: AI is revolutionizing drug discovery; pesticide discovery is overdue for the same transformation because the underlying biochemistry is similar.
Pesticide safety is a problem: the ideal pesticide kills only pests and nothing else — current solutions poison the entire ecosystem along with their targets.
Solution
We use AI to build better pesticides.
We're building neural networks to replace an entire wet lab. Our wet lab in San Carlos conducts high-throughput assays that generate training data for our models. This approach—scaling computation and data rather than relying on manual design—is the fastest path to developing new pesticides and follows the teachings of Richard Sutton's The Bitter Lesson.
We're currently developing our first pesticide for the invasive pest Spodoptera frugiperda. More to come soon!
Careers
We're looking for exceptional talent who share our vision of transforming agriculture through AI. This is your opportunity to join the next huge agriculture company who will do things right this time, building safer, more effective pesticides that protect both crops and ecosystems. If you're passionate about using technology to solve global challenges and want to make a meaningful impact on food security, we'd love to hear from you.
Questions about opportunities? Reach out to us at careers@bindwell.ai.
We have the following job openings:
- Machine Learning Intern (Summer 2026)
- Founding Machine Learning Engineer
- Head of Biology
- Lab Technician
News & Press
- Defeating pests with AI models: Our first-principles approach
- Teen founders raise $6M to reinvent pesticides using AI
- Introducing APPT: Affinity Protein–Protein Transformers
Contact us
We're always glad to hear from industry professionals, investors, potential collaborators, and anyone else with an interest in what we're doing.
You can reach us
- by email at founders@bindwell.ai;
- by phone at +1 (202) 873-0009;