Jonny Hsu
| Jonny Hsu | |
| Occupation | Entrepreneur, CEO |
|---|---|
| Known for | Co-Founder & CEO of Blank Bio |
Jonathan "Jonny" Hsu is a Canadian entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief executive officer of Blank Bio, a healthcare technology company developing RNA-based artificial intelligence foundation models for precision medicine and drug discovery. The company was part of Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch.[1]
Career
Hsu studied in the Science and Business co-op program at the University of Waterloo, specializing in biochemistry.[2]
Hsu co-founded Blank Bio, which builds foundation models that analyze RNA data at the transcript level to improve clinical decision-making. Unlike conventional RNA analysis approaches that reduce transcriptomic data to gene-level counts, Blank Bio's models incorporate isoform, mutation, and expression signals to capture a more complete picture of transcript-level biology. The company states that this approach can surface coordinated multi-gene patterns that traditional methods are unable to detect.[3]
Blank Bio's technology is built on research conducted at the University of Toronto, the Vector Institute, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The company's prior research includes Orthrus, a project described as working toward evolutionary and functional RNA foundation models, and mRNABench, a curated benchmark for mature mRNA property and function prediction, both of which have been published as preprints on bioRxiv.[4]
The company's applications span several areas of precision medicine: patient stratification for clinical trial enrichment and resistance profiling; enhanced diagnostics through improved disease classification and subtyping from routine RNA-seq samples; target discovery through transcript-level pattern analysis; therapeutic design and optimization of RNA-based therapeutics; and biosecurity monitoring.[5]
As of 2025, Blank Bio is based in San Francisco, California, and employs approximately three people. The company has posted job listings for machine learning engineers with compensation ranging from $150,000 to $200,000 in salary plus equity.[6]
References
- ↑ "Blank Bio — Y Combinator". 'Blank Bio}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Advice for your internship". 'University of Waterloo}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Blank Bio — RNA intelligence for precision medicine". 'Blank Bio}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Blank Bio — RNA intelligence for precision medicine". 'Blank Bio}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Blank Bio — RNA intelligence for precision medicine". 'Blank Bio}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.
- ↑ "Blank Bio — Machine Learning Engineer". 'Huge Magazine}'. Retrieved 2026-03-19.