Bioptimus secures $35 million seed funding to advance AI foundational model focused on biology

There’s a new generative AI startup emerging from Paris called Bioptimus, and what sets it apart is its exclusive focus on biology. Unlike many other AI ventures, Bioptimus plans to leverage the collective learnings from the past few years in AI models specifically within the realm of biology.

The rationale behind Bioptimus’s exclusive focus on biology stems from the unique challenges associated with accessing training data in this field. Unlike web crawling, which is commonly used for data acquisition, Bioptimus faces data challenges related to sensitive clinical information that isn’t readily available to the public.

As with other AI startups, Bioptimus anticipates significant capital requirements for its operations, including expenses for training its models on costly GPUs and hiring top-tier researchers. To support its ambitions, the startup is raising a substantial $35 million seed round, with Sofinnova Partners leading the investment. Other notable participants in this funding round include Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund, Frst, Cathay Innovation, Headline, Hummingbird, NJF Capital, Owkin, Top Harvest Capital, and Xavier Niel.

Bioptimus isn’t entering the scene without experienced leadership. Jean-Philippe Vert, serving as co-founder and executive chairman, brings his expertise from his role as Chief R&D Officer at Owkin, a French biotech unicorn focused on using AI to discover new drugs and enhance diagnostics.

Joining Vert is Rodolphe Jenatton, Bioptimus’s CTO, who boasts significant experience in artificial intelligence, having previously held a senior research scientist position at Google. Additionally, several co-founders of Bioptimus are former researchers from Google DeepMind, further underlining the startup’s formidable talent pool in the AI space.