Bioptimus Reaches $76M Milestone as It Prepares for Next-Gen AI Foundation Model

Bioptimus, a French AI startup, has announced a $76 million funding milestone, with $41 million secured in its latest round led by Cathay Innovation less than 12 months from its initial seed round.

The funding, supported by Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance, Andera Partners, and others, will propel the development of a multi-scale, multi-modal AI foundation model for biology, expected to launch in 2025. This model is designed to simulate biological processes across scales and modalities, offering applications in medicine, biotech, cosmetics, and more.

This progress builds on the July 2024 launch of H-Optimus-0, described as the largest open-source AI foundation model for pathology. With 1.1 billion parameters, H-Optimus-0, said to be "the first in a series of models planned for release", was trained on a proprietary dataset of several hundred million images from over 500,000 histopathology slides sourced from 4,000 clinical practices. It has demonstrated high performance on tasks such as detecting cancerous cells, identifying genetic abnormalities, and subtyping ovarian cancer, with evaluations highlighting its diagnostic accuracy. Future iterations aim to incorporate diverse pathology data from Europe, Asia, and Africa while expanding to include genomics and proteomics.

See also: 19 Companies Pioneering AI Foundation Models in Pharma and Biotech

Bioptimus stems from the expertise of executives who previously shaped Owkin, a leader in AI-driven drug discovery. Jean-Philippe Vert, Bioptimus’s CEO, was formerly Owkin’s Chief R&D Officer and a Google researcher. He is joined by David Cahané and Eric Durand, senior leaders from Owkin, reflecting the shared vision between the two companies. Owkin remains intertwined with Bioptimus, listed as a signatory in its registration documents, and both companies share Paris headquarters.

Jean-Philippe Vert emphasized that H-Optimus-0 serves as the foundation for a broader vision to integrate data across molecules, cells, tissues, and organisms by breaking down biological silos. The funding will further enhance Bioptimus’s multi-modal AI platform, expand datasets, and strengthen partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech companies.

Topic: AI in Bio