Basecamp Research, a London company that designs medicines with AI, has raised an oversubscribed $140 million Series C. S32, the firm led by former Verily CEO Andy Conrad, led the round. Conrad joins the board.
The investor list is unusually broad. It includes NVIDIA, Anthropic’s Anthology Fund, the NATO Innovation Fund, The Rockefeller Foundation, King Philanthropies, Catalio Capital Management, True Ventures, Redalpine, Singular, Sovereign AI, Firebrand River Capital, Inception Fund, European Tech Collective and PostScriptum, plus leaders from pharma and biotech.
The data nobody else has
Basecamp’s edge is its data. Over several years it has built the Trillion Gene Atlas, which it calls the world’s largest proprietary genomic dataset. It was collected through partnerships in more than 30 countries on all seven continents. Most biology AI models train on the same public databases. Basecamp’s EDEN foundation models train on genetic diversity those databases don’t contain.
The EDEN models design cell and gene therapies, enzymes and peptides. Basecamp pairs them with its own DNA-writing cell technology, so it can make and test what the models design.
Reprogramming cells inside the body
The pipeline focuses on in vivo cell therapy. Instead of taking a patient’s cells out, engineering them in a lab and putting them back, the therapy reprograms cells inside the body. The targets include cancer and autoimmune disease.
“AI-based approaches promise to change what’s possible for patients who currently have few alternatives,” says co-founder and CEO Glen Gowers. The company has also brought on Richard Pearce, formerly of Biogen, as chief business officer.
Basecamp works with NVIDIA, Anthropic, PacBio and Ultima Genomics, and collaborates with Anthropic on Claude Science to generate therapeutic candidates. It has labs in London and Cambridge, Massachusetts.