The Forum picked 100 early-stage companies from 28 countries for its 2025 cohort. Phagos is one of them, for using AI to match phages to the bacteria they kill.
The World Economic Forum has named Phagos one of its 2025 Technology Pioneers. The cohort brings together 100 early-stage companies from 28 countries, each working on a problem the Forum considers urgent. Ours is antimicrobial resistance.
Bacteria are becoming resistant to the antibiotics we rely on, in people and in animals. Phages, the natural predators of bacteria, can kill strains that antibiotics no longer touch. The hard part is finding the right phage for each strain. Our models read the genomes of both the phage and the bacterium to predict which phage will kill which bacterium, and our lab checks those predictions.
Technology Pioneers take part in the Forum’s work for two years, alongside leaders from companies, governments and research. For us, that means time with the people who shape policy and funding on antimicrobial resistance. Most of that discussion is still about new antibiotics. We want phages in it too.
Our co-founders Alexandros Pantalis and Adèle James are in Tianjin, China this week for the Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions. This week the Forum also published our piece on how AI is reviving a century-old solution against antibiotic resistance.