A new wave of artificial intelligence is moving beyond software and into the biological machinery of the human body, and UK startup Basecamp Research is positioning itself at the centre of that shift. The London based life sciences company has raised $140 million in Series C funding to advance AI models capable of designing potential medicines from biological data, with the ambition of making complex therapies faster to develop and easier to customise.
Major Backing
The funding round was led by S32, the California venture firm founded by Bill Maris, who previously founded GV, the venture capital arm associated with Alphabet. The round also attracted major technology and institutional investors, including NVIDIA’s venture arm NVentures and Anthropic’s Anthology Fund, a partnership between Anthropic and Menlo Ventures.
Other investors include Catalio, the NATO Innovation Fund, Rockefeller, European Tech Collective and the UK government’s Sovereign AI Fund. Existing backers Firebrand, River Capital, King Philanthropies and Redalpine also participated.
The new investment takes Basecamp Research’s total funding raised to $225 million. The company plans to use the capital to train a new generation of biological AI models and move its pipeline of AI designed therapeutics closer to clinical development.
AI Meets Biology
Basecamp Research has built its technology around a large proprietary biological dataset called BaseData. According to the company, the dataset contains more than 10 billion novel genes from over one million species, collected through biodiversity partnerships spanning more than 30 countries. Its broader data network now covers more than 200 partner locations across 31 countries.
The company argues that conventional biological datasets are heavily concentrated around a relatively small number of well studied organisms. By gathering genomic information from a much wider range of environments and species, Basecamp aims to give its AI systems a broader understanding of how biology works.
The EDEN Models
At the centre of Basecamp’s technology is EDEN, a family of biological foundation models designed to translate disease biology into potential therapeutic candidates.
The company says EDEN can work across different therapeutic modalities and disease areas rather than being limited to a single specialised biological task. Its models have already been used to design antimicrobial peptides and programmable genetic medicines.
Basecamp reports that EDEN has demonstrated strong results in laboratory testing, including a 97 percent success rate in one antimicrobial peptide programme against priority pathogens. The company also says one AI designed candidate performed comparably to a last line antibiotic in a mouse study without conventional optimisation steps.
Reprogramming Cells
One of Basecamp’s most ambitious areas is in vivo cell therapy, where the company is exploring ways to reprogram a patient’s cells inside the body.
The company’s AI programmable gene insertion technology is designed to create proteins capable of inserting large DNA sequences into specific genomic locations. Basecamp says the approach could support more complex genetic medicines while avoiding some of the limitations associated with existing editing technologies.
Its research also covers applications in cell therapy, genetic medicine and targeted therapeutic design. The company says its systems can help create programmable genetic payloads and support more sophisticated approaches to engineering cells.
Building a Biological Foundation
Basecamp’s founders, Glen Gowers and Oliver Vince, trace the company’s origins to their academic work in synthetic biology, bioengineering and cancer research. Gowers previously worked on engineering biology and became the first person to sequence DNA off grid during an expedition to a European ice cap, while Vince has led expeditions focused on collecting genomic information from extreme environments.
The company is now expanding this philosophy through its Trillion Gene Atlas, an initiative designed to dramatically increase the amount of evolutionary information available for training biological AI. Basecamp says the project will work with partners including Anthropic, NVIDIA, Ultima Genomics and PacBio.
Toward Programmable Medicine
With the latest funding, Basecamp Research is seeking to combine massive biological datasets, increasingly powerful AI models and laboratory validation into a new drug discovery platform.
Rather than relying solely on traditional trial and error approaches, the company aims to use AI to generate therapeutic designs from an understanding of biological systems. Its long term goal is to make medicines more programmable, precise and adaptable to individual disease mechanisms.
The $140 million round gives Basecamp significant resources to continue developing that platform, expand its therapeutic pipeline and push its AI generated candidates toward the next stage of development.