Business Wire

Bioptimus Hits $76M Funding Milestone and Prepares to Launch Groundbreaking Foundation Model for Biology

Share

Bioptimus, the pioneering AI foundation model company, announced today that it has reached a significant funding milestone of $76 million. This total includes a $41 million cash injection, led by Cathay Innovation with participation from prominent investors, including Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance through its Large Venture Fund, Andera Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Boom Capital Ventures, Pomifer Capital, Sunrise, and angel entrepreneurs Emmanuel Cassimatis and Thomas Wolf. The funding will accelerate Bioptimus’s mission to build the world’s first universal AI foundation model for biology, aimed at revolutionizing research and innovation across the medical, biotech, cosmetic industries, and beyond.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250114054102/en/

The company has been building momentum this year, assembling a world-class team, securing access to unique data sources, and successfully releasing its first model, H-Optimus-0, the world’s largest foundation model for pathology. H-Optimus-0 has already outperformed all other pathology models in independent benchmarks, including assessments conducted by Harvard Medical School’s HEST program1 and the University of Leeds.2 These studies highlighted the model’s unparalleled ability to predict gene expression from morphology and to subtype ovarian cancer with exceptional accuracy.

Breaking Down Silos in Biology

Bioptimus is redefining how we approach biological research by addressing a longstanding issue: the siloed nature of biological understanding. Historically, research has focused on isolated biological components, such as DNA, proteins, cells or tissues. Even existing AI foundation models operate within these silos, limiting their potential impact. Bioptimus’s revolutionary approach integrates data across multiple scales (molecules, cells, tissues, organisms) and modalities (imaging, genetics, etc), enabling a holistic view of biology as it exists in reality.

Jean-Philippe Vert, co-founder and CEO of Bioptimus, stated: “What we are building is not just a technological breakthrough; it’s a transformative tool for understanding biology in its full complexity. By learning how biology works directly from raw data across scales, from molecules to whole organisms, our model will empower researchers in the pharmaceutical industry to simulate complex biology, predict disease outcomes and response to treatment, and design therapies with unprecedented precision. Beyond pharmaceuticals, this model will unlock limitless possibilities across many other industries, driving biological discoveries in ways we are only beginning to imagine. Essentially, it’s like the GPT of biology—but instead of generating text, we’re simulating biology.”

The funding will enable Bioptimus to enhance its multi-modal AI platform, integrating even more diverse data sources and therapeutic areas, forge strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech companies and expand critical datasets to further refine and validate its models.

Jacky Abitbol, Partner at Cathay Innovation, said: "Bioptimus is at the forefront of transforming biological research, leveraging cutting-edge AI to break down silos and unlock the full complexity of biology. By integrating data across multiple scales and modalities, Bioptimus is paving the way for groundbreaking innovations across industries, from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology and beyond. We are delighted to see that since our initial investment a year ago, Bioptimus has succeeded in structuring a world-class team, while achieving key milestones in its development, notably with the launch of its AI foundation model for pathology in July, the largest in the world."

By combining the power of AI with a truly integrated view of biology, Bioptimus will empower researchers and multiple industries to solve some of the most complex challenges in medicine, biotechnology, and beyond.

For more information, visit bioptimus.com.

About Cathay Innovation

Cathay Innovation is a multistage venture capital firm, affiliated to Cathay Capital, investing in founders building transformative businesses across Europe, North America, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Its platform connects founders with investors and its ecosystem of leading Fortune500 corporations to help startups scale and transform industries with consumer to enterprise and AI solutions in commerce, fintech, digital health and mobility / energy. Founded in Paris in 2015, Cathay Innovation now manages over €2.5B AUM with additional offices in Berlin, San Francisco, Shanghai and Singapore and has invested in over 100 startups including Chime, Pinduoduo (NASDAQ: PDD), Glovo, Wallbox (NYSE: WBX), Owkin, Getaround, Ledger, ZenBusiness, Alma, Descartes Underwriting and more.

To learn more, visit us at www.cathayinnovation.com or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter @cathayinnov.

____________________________________

1 Mahmood Lab, 2024. HEST: Hierarchical Embedding of Spatial Transcriptomics. Available at: https://github.com/mahmoodlab/HEST

2 Arxiv.org, 2024. A New Model for Data Processing in Neural Networks. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.09990

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250114054102/en/

Contacts

Media Contact:press@bioptimus.com

(c) 2024 Business Wire, Inc., All rights reserved.

Business Wire, a Berkshire Hathaway company, is the global leader in multiplatform press release distribution.

Subscribe to releases from Business Wire

Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Latest releases from Business Wire

Duravant to Acquire Pattyn, Provider of Packaging Automation Systems for Bulk and Industrial Applications7.2.2025 15:00:00 CET | Press Release

Duravant LLC (“Duravant”), a global engineered equipment and automation solutions provider to the food processing, packaging and material handling sectors, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Pattyn Group BV (‘Pattyn”), a designer and manufacturer of automation systems specializing in B2B packaging. Pattyn is recognized as the premier leader for delivering comprehensive automation solutions and value-added services for bag-in-box packaging applications. Headquartered in Bruges, Belgium, Pattyn has over 70 years of expertise in machinery design and turnkey systems for counting, weighing, filling, and packing technologies for food, ingredients, and various non-food sectors. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250207117623/en/ “We are extremely excited to partner with Pattyn,” said Mike Kachmer, Chairman and CEO of Duravant. “Pattyn has a rich history delivering high quality

Leclanché and Pinnacle Advance Strategic Partnership – Milestone Reached with Successful Completion of Due Diligence7.2.2025 09:50:00 CET | Press Release

Ad hoc announcement pursuant to Art. 53 LR Leclanché SA (SIX: LECN), a global leader in energy storage solutions, specialised in heavy duty batteries for Marine and Rail customers, is pleased to announce that Pinnacle International Capital Limited has completed the legal, financial and technical due diligence of the Leclanché group to its satisfaction, thereby fulfilling a key condition on the way to the implementation of the strategic partnership. As a next step in the transaction, Pinnacle will conduct an engineering review. The engineering review aims to optimise the agreed business plan and investment. At the same time, Leclanché will be working through an agreed workplan to address the due diligence items that were identified, with the goal of improving the starting point for the strategic partnership and the investment by Pinnacle. Through this transformative strategic partnership, Pinnacle’s investment will help unlock the strategic growth funding required to support Leclanché’s

Salience Labs Closed Series A Round Led by Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund7.2.2025 09:14:00 CET | Press Release

Salience Labs Limited, a leader in photonic solutions targeting connectivity for AI datacenter infrastructure, today announced the successful close of $30 million in Series A financing led by ICM HPQC Fund and Applied Ventures, LLC, the venture capital arm of Applied Materials, Inc., to further the development of its optical switches for large scale AI connectivity. Applied Ventures and ICM HPQC Fund are joined by Strategic Investment Fund, Braavos, and continued participation from existing investors Oxford Sciences Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital, and leaders from the global semiconductor industry including Silicon Catalyst and Jalal Bagherli. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250207290130/en/ Image by Shabbir Bashar “What our customers want is a photonic switch to connect their AI clusters that is compatible with existing infrastructure while delivering high bandwidth, low latency and significant pow

Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association Announces 2024 Sake Export Data: Record-High Exports to 80 Countries, Up 6% YoY7.2.2025 04:00:00 CET | Press Release

2024 Sake Export Performance This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250205320328/en/ More people around the world are enjoying Japanese sake (Photo: Business Wire) The Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association (JSS) has released 2024 sake export data. The total export value reached JPY 43.5 billion, a +6% increase from the previous year, with 3.45 million cases (9L equivalent) shipped to a record 80 countries. Since 2020, export value has grown 1.8 times, the average unit price increased 1.3 times, and the number of export destinations expanded by 19. Premium sake markets have seen significant growth in the past five years. Regionally, Asia accounted for 61% of total export value but saw a slight decline YoY. However, South Korea recorded a notable 29% growth, while Thailand and Malaysia also performed well. North America saw a 27% increase, driven by fine-dining adoption. Western Europe grew 18% YoY, expanding 2.5 ti

DNIB.com Reports Internet Has 364.3 Million Domain Name Registrations at the End of the Fourth Quarter of 20246.2.2025 23:19:00 CET | Press Release

VeriSign, Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN), a global provider of critical internet infrastructure and domain name registry services, today announced that, according to the latest Domain Name Industry Brief Quarterly Report from DNIB.com, the fourth quarter of 2024 closed with 364.3 million domain name registrations across all top-level domains (TLDs), an increase of 2.0 million domain name registrations, or 0.5% compared to the third quarter of 2024. Domain name registrations also increased by 4.4 million, or 1.2%, year over year. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined total of 169.0 million domain name registrations in the domain name base at the end of fourth quarter of 2024, a decrease of 0.5 million domain name registrations, or 0.3% compared to the third quarter of 2024. The .com and .net TLDs had a combined decrease of 3.7 million domain name registrations, or 2.1%, year over year. As of Dec. 31, 2024, the .com domain name base totaled 156.3 million domain name registrations and the .net domai

In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.

Visit our pressroom
World GlobeA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.HiddenA line styled icon from Orion Icon Library.Eye