Bioptimus raises 35 million euros to create an AI dedicated to biology

Unsplash – DR

Accelerating discoveries in biology thanks to artificial intelligence? This is the objective of the French start-up Bioptimus, which has just raised 35 million euros from investors.

Co-founded by former researchers from Google DeepMind and the unicorn Owkin, Bioptimus intends to embark on the construction of an artificial intelligence model dedicated to biology.

“Biology, health, medicine are fields where there is an accumulation of data. We want to build artificial intelligence which will be trained on this data to allow researchers and companies to accelerate discoveries”, Jean-Philippe Vert, president of Bioptimus, explains to AFP.

Concretely, the start-up plans to use public data, as well as other raw data on cells, tissues, images, via partnerships with hospitals and companies to learn “complex biological mechanisms”. This artificial intelligence model should then make it possible to create new molecules, both to manufacture new drugs or for applications linked to the understanding of living things.

Their first client will therefore be the pharmaceutical industry , but this is not their only target: “As soon as you have a model that learns on data linked to proteins and DNA, all the fields that need to understand living things to synthesize new molecules, such as environmental sciences, agro- food, cosmetics, energy, are likely to be interested”, said Jean-Philippe Vert.

Already supported by Sofinnova Partners, BPI France and Xavier Niel, Bioptimus is already planning a new fundraising in “less than a year”, the deadline it has set for building its AI model and establishing commercial partnerships.

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