Bioptimus raises $41 million to develop ‘GPT for biology’

A French AI startup has raised $41 million to develop a basic model for artificial intelligence in biology.

Just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT It has taken the world by storm with a super-intelligent generative AI tool capable of having a natural language conversation in the form of text, Bioptimus The company takes this concept, but trains its model specifically for downstream biological applications — something that comes with a unique set of challenges, since the clinical training data required tends to be sensitive, and not publicly available.

Bioptimus Co-Founder and CEO Jean-Philippe Ver He says the company is looking to develop a greater understanding of biology by learning how it works from raw data spanning from molecules to entire organisms. He says this will enable scientists and researchers to mimic the biological world to “predict disease outcomes” and develop more effective treatments. It’s this simulation that Vert says brings its technology closer to the basic model of ChatGPT.

“Basically, it’s like GPT in biology — but instead of generating text, we’re simulating biology,” he said in an article. statement.

Hotbed

France has emerged as something of a A hotbed for startups in the field of artificial intelligencewith generative AI companies across the country Securing the lion’s share of financing As of last year. Includes mega financing rounds Mistral, an artificial intelligence company valued at $640 million slice, H insurance of $220 millionand Face hugging Closed a $235 million investment – ​​all within the last 18 months.

For its part, Bioptimus was only founded last year, but it’s already established Raised a $35 million seed round. That it has now raised a combined total of $76 million, less than a year after its founding, is a testament not only to the current AI hype, but also to the backgrounds of Bioptimus’s six co-founders. Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Rudolph GinatonFor example, he was previously a senior research scientist at Amazon and Google. Meanwhile, Vert is not only the co-founder and CEO of Bioptimus, but also the chief research and development officer of Bioptimus. OKINA French rhinoceros And another AI-powered biotech startup with backers including GV.

This dual role indicates the origins of Bioptimus. Okin leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery, and has built a wealth of partnerships with top biopharma companies. As part of this work, Okin also collected a large number of multimodal patient data, which is what Bioptimus uses to train its core model.

Rather than creating a spin-off within Okine focused on foundational models, it made more sense to create a separate entity.

“Building biologics (foundational models) is not part of Owkin’s roadmap, but Owkin is supportive and keen to partner with a company like Bioptimus,” Vert explained to TechCrunch in an interview last year. “Very large-scale training (foundational models) requires significant resources in terms of data volume, computing power, and breadth of data modalities that are easy to open as a defined entity. As a ‘pure player’ in foundational models, Bioptimus is best equipped to do this.”

In the intervening months, Pioptimus Fired H-Optimus-0, a basic open source pathology model, is trained on millions of images to help research and diagnose diseases, such as cancer. However, with a new $41 million in the bank, the company is set to enhance its AI platform with a more diverse set of data sources covering broader therapeutic areas, while it will also look to build more partnerships with the pharma and biotech sector.

As part of this, it is preparing to launch a new multi-modal foundation model later this year, covering the entire biological spectrum, a model that could drive development in sectors including medicine, biotechnology and even cosmetics.

“Beyond pharmaceuticals, this model will open limitless possibilities in many other industries, driving biological discoveries in ways we are only beginning to imagine,” Vert said.

US venture capital firm Cathay Innovation led the latest fundraise for Bioptimus, with participation from Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance, Andera Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Boom Capital Ventures, Pomifer Capital, Sunrise, and several angel investors.