Endpoints News provided in-depth coverage on Sofinnova’s latest deal, leading a $35 million seed round for Bioptimus, a French startup working to create AI foundational models for biology.
Edward Kliphuis, Partner in the Sofinnova Digital Medicine Strategy, cited the importance of data in this effort: “If you want to go to the foundational level of biology and train a model on that, if you think of how expensive it is to do RNA single cell or spatial omics, you already see that it’s not trivial to get sufficient data to train these models on,” he said in an interview.
Kyle LaHucik, Senior Reporter at Endpoints, also interviewed Bioptimus General Manager and Co-Founder David Cahané, who explained the company's purpose, and its plans for the funds. Cahané is also chief solution officer at Owkin, which is providing data to Bioptimus.
Bioptimus plans to release foundational models in protein, cell and histology modalities this year, Cahané said. The seed financing will largely go toward computing and data, with the company working to secure exclusive data deals with biomedical groups, he added. It’s working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Services for the computing needed to train the models.
“We believe that in a few years, maybe five, 10 years — a huge percentage of the data-driven research done in the biomedical ecosystem will be made on top of a foundation model, and we hope that Bioptimus’ foundation model will be the standard one in the ecosystem,” he said.
Kliphuis said he got to know the Owkin team via a mutual interest in foundation models — and the fact that their offices are on the same street. Owkin, often touted as a French unicorn, has raised $300 million and struck deals with Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck and others.
Also participating in the Bioptimus seed round were: Bpifrance, Headline, Hummingbird Ventures, NJF Capital, Owkin and Top Harvest Capital. French VCs Cathay Investments Limited, Frst and the tech entrepreneur @Xavier Niel also joined the round.
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Edward Kliphuis Simon Turner Javier Nunez-Vicandi Aishwarya Parthasarathy
🎉 Congratulations Karl Moritz Hermann, Marc G. Bellemare, Richard Schlegel, Ph.D., and the entire Reliant AI team on this significant milestone! We're thrilled to support your journey and look forward to seeing the amazing advancements you’ll achieve with this seed funding! 🚀