LEXINGTON, Mass.–Valo Health and Montai Therapeutics have announced a merger that will combine their artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery technologies and clinical development programs, creating a biotechnology company focused on developing new treatments for complex diseases.
The combined company will operate under the Valo Health name and will be led by Brian Alexander, MD, MPH, CEO of Valo Health and CEO-Partner at Flagship Pioneering.
The merger brings together Valo’s AI-enabled platform for identifying disease mechanisms and predicting drug behavior with Montai’s chemistry discovery capabilities and clinical-stage pipeline targeting immunology and inflammatory diseases.
Both companies were established within the Flagship Pioneering ecosystem, which has supported the development of biotechnology companies focused on emerging scientific technologies.
“Valo and Montai were founded on the belief that human evidence should guide every step of drug discovery. This is particularly important in complex, heterogeneous areas like immunology, where a broad diagnosis can have many underlying disease mechanisms,” said Alexander. “Together, we can apply human evidence from target to molecule to patient, with the goal of improving translation from discovery to medicines for a wide range of diseases.”
The combined company’s clinical pipeline will be led by MTAI-1025, an investigational oral NRF2 agonist that Montai recently advanced into Phase 1 clinical testing for ulcerative colitis.
Valo will also continue developing additional treatments targeting established pathways involved in immune and inflammatory disorders. These include Montai’s oral STAT6 inhibitor, which is being developed for atopic dermatitis and other diseases associated with type 2 inflammation.
The companies said the integration will expand their ability to identify drug targets, discover potential therapeutic compounds, and select patient populations most likely to benefit from treatment.
Valo’s existing pharmaceutical partnerships in cardiometabolic and neurodegenerative diseases will continue following the merger.
“This merger creates a single company with complementary platforms, a growing pipeline, established biopharma partnerships, and a clear path to its next stage of growth,” continued Alexander. “Valo and Montai share a core philosophy that human evidence should drive drug discovery, making this a compelling opportunity to bring complementary technology and programs together while maintaining momentum across the portfolio.”
Montai has focused on using artificial intelligence to identify potential oral medicines from chemical compounds with documented human exposure. Its technology is designed to discover small-molecule drugs for biological targets that have historically been difficult to address using conventional approaches.
“Montai was built to harness AI to discover and develop new oral medicines from a vast, underexplored chemical space with known human exposure. We’ve proven the platform works, successfully advancing multiple differentiated development candidates for clinically validated targets historically intractable for small molecules,” said Margo Georgiadis, Co-Founder and CEO of Montai and CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering. “Joining Valo allows us to apply our platform to more targets across I&I and broader therapeutic areas as well as ensuring the right targeted patient populations for our programs.”
Georgiadis will remain involved as an advisor during the transition, supporting the integration of Montai’s research platforms and development programs into Valo.
The companies did not disclose financial terms of the merger.
