The French AI startup Bioptimus, aiming to develop a large language model (LLM) for biotechnology, has raised $35 million just months after its inception.
The company was founded by Jean-Philippe Vert, a former researcher at Google Brain. He is also the Director of Research and Development at Owkin, a French biotech unicorn striving to discover new drugs and enhance diagnostics through artificial intelligence. At Bioptimus, he aims to create a model trained on data essential for understanding biological processes.
Access to data in this field is not straightforward. While OpenAI is gradually moving away from internet searches in favor of licensing deals with content publishers, Bioptimus faces different challenges. It must handle confidential clinical data that is not publicly available.
“By leveraging foundational models and advanced algorithms trained on vast arrays of biological and multimodal data of varying scales, we aim to capture the laws of biology that have so far been too complex to fully understand,” stated Vert.
According to him, Bioptimus has a significant competitive advantage, as it can train its model using vast amounts of high-quality patient data available through Owkin, in a field where access to information is strictly regulated.
Although the $35 million funding seems substantial at such an early stage, it has become the norm for startups developing LLMs, which require large volumes of costly computational resources and top-tier specialists.
Back in December 2023, the Paris-based AI project Mistral AI raised €385 million in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures.