ReactWise, a YC-backed startup co-founded by Jonathan Gaffney and Thomas Fink, is using AI to accelerate pharmaceutical manufacturing — targeting the slow, expensive, and often opaque process of scaling drug synthesis from laboratory to production.
The core problem ReactWise is solving is well-documented: translating a successful lab-scale chemical reaction into a reliable industrial process can take years and hundreds of failed iterations. AI-assisted process optimisation can dramatically compress that timeline by predicting reaction outcomes, identifying bottlenecks, and suggesting parameter adjustments before costly physical experiments.
As a YC-backed company, ReactWise enters with a credibility signal that matters in a sector where enterprise trust is slow to build. The pharmaceutical manufacturing market is enormous and largely untouched by AI-native tools — making it a compelling wedge for a focused
