Kathleen McMahon is Co-Founder and CEO at Valthos, a biosecurity software startup building AI systems to defend against bioweapon attacks and emerging biological threats.

Kathleen served as Head of Life Sciences at Palantir Technologies for over 10 years, deploying software for mission-critical systems in healthcare and biopharma. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from Georgetown University.

Kathleen co-founded Valthos with Tess van Stekelenburg in November 2024 after recognizing the urgent need for faster biodefense capabilities. The company emerged from stealth in October 2025 with backing from OpenAI, emphasizing that it is easier to make a pathogen than a cure.

Valthos raised $30M in seed funding led by OpenAI Startup Fund, Lux Capital, and Founders Fund. The nine-person team includes engineers from Palantir, DeepMind, and computational biologists from Stanford's Arc Institute and MIT's Broad Institute.

Valthos builds AI systems to rapidly characterize biological sequences and compress the time to design medical countermeasures from months to hours. The platform aggregates biological data from government and commercial sources to identify emerging threats and update medicines in real time.