A fledgling French AI startup, Bioptimus, has raised $41 million to develop a foundational AI model for biology, mirroring the concept of OpenAI's ChatGPT but with a specific focus on downstream biological applications. This significant funding round brings the company's total investment to $76 million, less than a year after its foundation.

Bioptimus co-founder and CEO Jean-Philippe Vert explained that the company is striving to develop a deeper understanding of biology by learning from raw data spanning molecules to entire organisms. This, he believes, will enable scientists and researchers to simulate the biological world, predict disease outcomes, and develop more effective treatments. Vert likened Bioptimus's technology to ChatGPT's underlying model, stating that "essentially, it's like the GPT of biology — but instead of generating text, we're simulating biology."

France has emerged as a hotbed for AI startups, with generative AI companies securing significant funding in recent times. Notable examples include Mistral AI's $640 million tranche, H securing $220 million, and Hugging Face closing a $235 million investment, all within the past 18 months. Bioptimus, founded last year, has already raised a $35 million seed round, demonstrating the current AI hype and the impressive backgrounds of its six co-founders.

The co-founders' backgrounds are indeed impressive, with Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Rodolphe Jenatton previously serving as a senior research scientist at Amazon and Google. Vert, in addition to his role at Bioptimus, is also the Chief R&D Officer at Owkin, a French unicorn and AI-infused biotech startup backed by GV. This dual role hints at Bioptimus's origins, as Owkin leverages AI and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery and has built partnerships with top biopharmaceutical companies.

Owkin has amassed a significant amount of multimodal patient data, which Bioptimus is utilizing to train its foundational model. Rather than creating a tangential unit within Owkin focused on foundational models, it made more sense to establish a separate entity. Vert explained that "building biology [foundational models] is not a part of Owkin's roadmap, but Owkin supports and is keen to partner with a company like Bioptimus."

In recent months, Bioptimus launched H-Optimus-0, an open-source foundation model for pathology, trained on millions of images to aid in disease research and diagnosis, including cancer. With the fresh $41 million investment, the company plans to bolster its AI platform with a more diverse array of data sources covering broader therapeutic areas, while also seeking to build further partnerships with the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors.

Bioptimus is gearing up to release a new multi-modal foundation model later this year, spanning the entire biological spectrum, which can drive development in sectors including medical, biotech, and even cosmetic. Vert expressed his optimism, stating that "beyond pharmaceuticals, this model will unlock limitless possibilities across many other industries, driving biological discoveries in ways we are only beginning to imagine."

The latest funding round was led by U.S. venture capital firm Cathay Innovation, with participation from Sofinnova Partners, Bpifrance, Andera Partners, Hitachi Ventures, Boom Capital Ventures, Pomifer Capital, Sunrise, and several angel investors. As Bioptimus continues to advance its foundational AI model for biology, it will be intriguing to observe the impact of this technology on various industries and the potential breakthroughs it may facilitate.