Basecamp Research Raises $60M to Build 'ChatGPT for Nature' and Advance AI in Biology

Start-up behind 'ChatGPT for nature' raises $60m

Basecamp Research claims its BaseFold model outperforms the Nobel-prize winning AlphaFold 2 for predicting large protein structures. London-based start-up Basecamp Research, which is building artificial intelligence (AI) models for life sciences, pharma and biotech, has completed a $60m funding round. The start-up has also entered into a multiyear collaboration with Dr David R Liu's laboratory at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Basecamp aims to develop models with better insights into biology than any human by training its AI on a vast amount of "ethically sourced" biological data. However, instead of feeding the model the thousands of published research papers in the field of biology, the start-up is gathering very particular data, building the model from the ground up. "We use a combination of exploration - literally going around the world to pick up data, understand hot springs, volcanoes, those sorts of things - and combine that with an artificial intelligence program that is focused purely on training massive language models to build, effectively, a ChatGPT for nature," Glen Gowers, the co-founder and CEO of Basecamp Research told Tech Crunch. The Series B funding round was led by French venture capital firm Singular and saw participation from S32; redalpine; André Hoffmann, the vice-chair of Roche; Feike Sijbesma, chair of Royal Philips and the former CEO of DSM; and Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever. The funding will go towards scaling the pace and volume of the start-up's data collection endeavours, the company said. Since starting in 2019, Basecamp has designed a number of AI models that work in the synthetic biology sector. The company claims its BaseFold model outperforms Google DeepMind's AlpaFold2, the creators of which, Demis Hassabis and John M Jumper, just won a Nobel Prize for their work predicting protein structures. In its collaboration with Dr Liu's laboratory, Basecamp Research aims to develop novel fusion proteins and other large molecules to enable the next generation of genetic medicines. "We are pushing past AI's limits in biological design by doubling down on solving the fundamental data gap that the entire biotech industry faces," said Gowers. "Basecamp Research is using its technology to generate new and deeper insights, going beyond known biology and each day expand what we can offer to our partners in the biopharma ecosystem." The start-up has raised $85m to date and works with more than 100 partners to expand its database and deliver biological breakthroughs. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

AI startup Basecamp raises $60M to scale research of proteins for 'programmable' next-gen meds - SiliconANGLE

AI startup Basecamp raises $60M to scale research of proteins for 'programmable' next-gen meds Basecamp Research, a biotechnology company that uses artificial intelligence to discover novel proteins and to help create new medicines, said today it completed a $60 million round and joined a multi-year collaboration with the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. The company's Series B financing round was led by Singular, with additional investors joining including S32, redalpine, True Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures, vice-chairman of Roche André Hoffmann, chair of Royal Philips Feike Sijbesma and Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever. Basecamp has been working to build an extensive dataset of proteins found in nature, with a vision of creating a knowledge graph that will feed AI algorithms to promote the discovery of unexplored drugs and materials. It does this using what the company calls a "foundational database tailored to AI." "We are pushing past AI's limits in biological design by doubling down on solving the fundamental data gap that the entire biotech industry faces," said Dr. Glen Gowers, co-founder and chief executive of Basecamp Research. "Basecamp Research is using its technology to generate new and deeper insights, going beyond known biology and each day expand what we can offer to our partners in the biopharma ecosystem." By joining the Broad Institute, Basecamp is collaborating with Dr. David R. Liu, a Howard Hughes medical institute investigator and core member at Broad, and the Liu Lab to create new approaches to "programmable genetic medicines." These medicines could include therapies that interact with biological systems to regulate doses, change their method of action or be designs based on specifically coded proteins from the genes of a population or disease. The objective is to create treatments for diseases by developing new methods of discovering fusion proteins and other large molecules to produce the next generation of drugs. Basecamp's transformative work has already led to the creation of new AI models for the discovery of new protein molecules using its technology. According to the company, although large language models such as ChatGPT have proven useful for helping scientists design and work with protein sequences they require significant training and conditioning on known protein starter sequences. To jumpstart this process, the company partnered with Ferruz Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona and announced the release of ZymCtrl in June. The company said it is a next-generation end-to-end protein LLM that provides design capabilities for generating artificial enzymes, a protein that speeds up chemical reactions in living cells. Unlike other LLMs, it requires no seed sequence and it can create enzymes that work and share only 30% resemblance to its training set. "With ZymCtrl, generating highly specific enzymes is as easy as interacting with a chatbot," said Noelia Ferruz, group leader of the laboratory, who has been partnering with Basecamp for over 2 years. The company also launched BaseFold, a deep learning model designed to predict the 3D structures of large, complex proteins more accurately than other models. The company said it created the new model by augmenting AlphaFold2, the industry gold standard for AI-powered protein prediction. BaseFold has proven six times more accurate than AlphaFold2 and provides a three-fold improvement in small molecule docking, the company added. Basecamp said it will use the proceeds from the fundraise to scale up its data collection efforts by growing its foundational dataset, which already contains 100 times more advanced biological systems information than public databases. The company also intends to greatly strengthen its research into AI capabilities and focus on a new generation of foundational models for protein discovery.

Basecamp Research taps $60M to build a 'GPT for biology' | TechCrunch

While companies like OpenAI and Anthropic continue to popularize the idea of people using ordinary language to ask artificial intelligence agents to answer their questions, write their proposals, and draw pictures, a London startup called Basecamp Research has raised $60 million to tackle a new frontier: an AI that not only answer any question related to biology and the biodiversity of the natural world, but produce new insights that humans could not do on their own. "There is an enormous data gap that exists today where people are training [biology] models," said Glen Gower, the CEO of Basecamp Research, in an interview. "Some of the top pharma companies the world are training models that simply don't see enough of the natural world." The startup's solution for fixing that is incredibly ambitious. Gower and his co-founder Oliver Vince are both biology PhDs who met back in their undergraduate days at Oxford. The name "Basecamp Research" comes from time spent living on an ice cap, Vince said, doing DNA sequencing on hardware they had built themselves. "We pioneered the first mobile DNA sequencing laboratory," he said. Those are the components that they've now adapted "into very small units" to collect data for the newer startup, he added. So, rather than trying to figure out how to bring order to the many megabytes and books of biological research that have been generated over decades, Basecamp Research is meticulously gathering primary data first-hand to build its models from the ground up, to build an AI that will be able to have better insights into biology than any human can, simply because of the breadth of data that can be brought to bear. "We use a combination of exploration -- literally going around the world to pick up data, understand Hot Springs, volcanoes, those sorts of things -- and combine that with an artificial intelligence program that is focused purely on training massive language models to build, effectively, a 'ChatGPT' for nature," Gower said. The startup is building what he said may well be the "largest compute cluster" also dedicated to the natural world to power this. Just as tools like ChatGPT's superpower is in recalling and formulating natural language responses to questions that are asked of it. the same goes for what Basecamp Research is setting out to do. The difference is that the breadth of information in the world -- Vince estimates that we have only managed to capture some 1% of information about our world's biodiversity -- means that we mere humans just don't even have the capacity to ask the right questions at this point. Or, as backer Andy Conrad of S32, previously CEO of Verily Life Sciences at Google, puts it: Basecamp Research's platform can "address questions that the biopharma industry hasn't even known to ask." "So rather than something that understands the language of text or speech, [our platform] understands the language of DNA, understands the language of biology, and therefore can go past what humans can do in the biological design space," Gowers continued. "We are traditionally very bad at understanding DNA, and therefore these language models, if given enough data, can really, really, really excel." The Series B, led by the Paris firm Singular, is coming alongside what Basecamp Research is describing as a "multi-year collaboration" Dr. David R. Liu and the Broad Institute, the major biomedical research center that works across MIT and Harvard. The plan will be to use the funding to continue building out the startup, both through partnerships with other biomedical and research organizations, and by amassing more data to expand its models. The funding is coming on the heels of some notable momentum for the startup. To date, Gower said, it has inked more than 100 partnerships across 25 countries, with organizations to expand its database with primary-source information, and some 15 that are using its AI to help build new products. Early examples of those products are Procter & Gamble, working on formulations for new fabric dyes that are more sustainable. Beyond this, however, Basecamp Research's roadmap includes helping organizations with drug discovery and other large challenges that touch on understanding and making better use of the natural world. While there are commercial deals being linked, its work with the Broad Institute sheds light on what form this might take. Right now, the labs run by Dr. Liu are looking at "novel fusion proteins and other large molecules," used to create genetic medicines, and they are using datasets from Basecamp Research to develop these. What is less likely, it seems, is an actual "chatGPT"-style interface for the startup. Right now, Gowers said they see more opportunity of working on a B2B basis rather than channelling resources into building a product to engage with the general public. That's not to say that might not be on its roadmap down the line, he added. (This appears to also be the approach that others building large "science" models are taking: Jua, which is building a large physics model, has initially targeted organizations that need better insights into weather patterns.) The startup is not disclosing any valuation, except to note that this Series B -- which also includes participation from S32, redalpine, André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of Roche, Feike Sijbesma, Chair ofRoyal Philips and Former CEO of DSM, and Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever -- is an upround. For some context, Basecamp Research has raised $85 million to date, with previous investors including Hummingbird, True Ventures, strategic backer Valo and others. PitchBook put its last valuation, from 2022, at a very modest $71 million.

Basecamp Research Initiates Genetic Medicine Collaboration with the Liu Laboratory and Completes $60 Million Series B Financing

Basecamp Research's industry-leading artificial intelligence platform trains on its proprietary data to design sophisticated biological solutions Collaboration with the Liu Lab to focus on next-generation genetic medicines with potentially transformative impact Focus on emerging technologies for first-in-class therapeutic collaborations aided by the appointment of Anupama Hoey as Chief Commercial Officer LONDON, Oct. 09, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Basecamp Research, an AI company dedicated to solving the most pressing challenges in the life sciences by exploring beyond known biology, today announced it has entered a multi-year collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. David R. Liu at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and also has completed a $60 million Series B financing led by Singular. Dr. Liu is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and a Core Member at the Broad. The Basecamp Research and the Liu Lab collaboration anticipates advancing new approaches to programmable genetic medicines that have the potential to transform treatments for a wide range of diseases. In its equity financing, Basecamp Research has attracted prominent investors and industry leaders at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the life sciences, bringing the total funding Basecamp Research has raised to date to $85 million. "We are pushing past AI's limits in biological design by doubling down on solving the fundamental data gap that the entire biotech industry faces," said Dr. Glen Gowers, co-founder and CEO of Basecamp Research. "Basecamp Research is using its technology to generate new and deeper insights, going beyond known biology and each day expand what we can offer to our partners in the biopharma ecosystem." In its collaboration with Dr. Liu's laboratory, Basecamp Research is pioneering the development of novel fusion proteins and other large molecules to enable the next generation of genetic medicines. Dr. Gowers stated, "In our collaboration, we bring together the Liu Lab's pioneering work in genome editing and leading wet-lab development expertise with Basecamp Research's proprietary datasets from around the globe and our in-house AI models designed to surpass the limits of human-based design." $60 million Series B Financing Basecamp Research's Series B financing was led by Singular, with additional investors including S32, redalpine, André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of Roche, Feike Sijbesma, Chair of Royal Philips and Former CEO of DSM, and Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever. Returning investors participating in the Series B include True Ventures and Hummingbird Ventures. The Series B proceeds will go toward scaling the pace and volume of Basecamp Research's data collection -- growing its foundational dataset that already contains 100 times more advanced biological systems than the public databases most-used by pharma researchers. Building on breakthroughs such as outperforming AlphaFold-2 and making enzyme design programmable, Basecamp Research will also continue to strengthen its AI capabilities, investing heavily in compute and working on a new generation of foundational models to tackle increasingly complex tasks. The funding round follows 15 successful commercial bioscience partnerships across a wide range of industries. As part of its expansion, Basecamp Research is adding to its management team, biotech veteran Anupama Hoey as Chief Commercial Officer, who brings more than 20 years of leadership experience and has transacted multiple biopharma deals worth more than $5 billion. S32's Andy Conrad, former CEO of Google's Verily Life Sciences, commented, "Basecamp Research has dedicated itself to solving some of the toughest challenges in the life sciences and is taking a truly first principles approach to address questions that the biopharma industry hasn't even known to ask." Raffi Kamber, General Partner at Singular, said, "The team at Basecamp Research is building powerful AI models that truly understand the breadth and complexity of biology. Their knowledge graph offers a step change in the performance of AI-based design and a fundamental shift in how life science teams innovate. We're thrilled to support a visionary company and team poised to reshape an entire industry." Basecamp Research Co-founder Dr. Oliver Vince added, "We've used AI to solve a wide range of challenging bioscience problems, and we look forward to continuing to work with partners on breakthrough projects. We are thrilled by this momentum and look forward to continuing to go beyond the limits of today's known biology." About Basecamp Basecamp Research is solving the most pressing challenges in the life sciences by exploring beyond known biology. We build foundational AI models on top of the world's largest, ethically sourced database of biological information to give AI the most complete understanding of biology ever. This allows us to design more complex biological systems than anyone else with performance improving dramatically as AI sees more diversity and context. Basecamp Research collaborates with biopharma companies and academic research institutions to design novel protein sequences and biological systems that can transform therapeutic research and development. Our team of explorers, scientists and policy experts proudly work with more than 100 biodiversity partners across the globe, allowing us to deliver breakthroughs that can have a profound impact on healthcare and the lives of patients. For more information, visit basecamp-research.com. Adam Silverstein SCIENT PR adam@scientpr.com SOURCE Basecamp Research Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs