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Xaira Therapeutics, an AI-driven biotechnology company, has named Jeff Jonker as President and Chief Operating Officer. Announced on July 9, 2025, in South San Francisco, California, this appointment strengthens Xaira’s leadership as it scales its innovative platform to transform drug discovery through artificial intelligence.
Jeff Jonker joins Xaira as President and COO to drive AI drug discovery.
Former CEO of Belharra Therapeutics, built company from the ground up.
Xaira’s platform integrates machine learning with therapeutic development.
Jonker to oversee operations and align with scientific vision.
Recent X-Atlas/Orion dataset release enhances AI-driven biology models.
Aims to accelerate life-changing medicine discovery for patients.
Jeff Jonker, a biotech industry veteran with over two decades of experience, joins Xaira from Belharra Therapeutics, where he served as CEO and first employee, shaping its vision and team. “Jeff is an accomplished biotech executive with extensive experience as an operator, director, senior advisor, and more,” said Marc Tessier-Lavigne, CEO of Xaira Therapeutics. “That kind of entrepreneurial leadership and operational excellence is exactly what Xaira needs as we scale our AI-powered discovery engine and push the boundaries of therapeutic innovation.” Jonker’s role involves working closely with Tessier-Lavigne to drive strategy and oversee operational functions, aligning them with Xaira’s mission to integrate machine learning with drug development.
Jonker’s career spans leadership roles at Ambys Medicines, where he was CEO, and NGM Biopharmaceuticals, where as President he expanded the therapeutic pipeline and secured a strategic partnership with Merck. His earlier roles at Genentech and Wilson Sonsini, advising life sciences clients, further highlight his expertise. “What drew me to Xaira is the scale of its ambition. This company is not just aiming to make better medicines, but to fundamentally reimagine how we discover them,” said Jonker. His legal background (J.D. from Columbia Law School) and international perspective (M.Litt. from the University of St. Andrews) equip him to lead Xaira’s growth.
Xaira’s platform combines machine learning, biological insights, and therapeutic development to accelerate the discovery of transformative medicines. “By uniting the best of machine learning, biological insight, and therapeutic development, Xaira has the potential to uncover treatments that were previously unimaginable and bring them to patients faster than ever before,” said Jonker. The company recently released X-Atlas/Orion, the largest publicly available genome-wide Perturb-seq dataset, profiling over 8 million single cells, reinforcing its commitment to open science and AI-driven innovation.
Xaira, backed by over $1 billion in funding from ARCH Venture Partners and Foresite Capital, is positioned to redefine drug discovery. Jonker’s appointment aligns with the company’s relocation to South San Francisco’s Gateway of Pacific III campus, enhancing access to biotech talent and collaboration. His leadership will drive Xaira’s mission to address unmet medical needs through AI, building on its robust team, including co-founder David Baker, a 2024 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry.
With Jeff Jonker’s proven track record and Xaira’s cutting-edge AI platform, the company is set to lead the next wave of biotech innovation, delivering life-changing therapies to patients faster and more efficiently than traditional methods allow.
Xaira Therapeutics is an integrated biotechnology company driving advances in artificial intelligence to learn the language of life and transform how we treat disease. The company seeks to rethink the drug discovery and development process from end-to-end by bringing together leading talent across three core areas: machine learning research to better understand biology, expansive data generation to power new models, and robust therapeutic product development to treat disease. Xaira is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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