We know that everyone, not literally but figuratively, is building an AI model right now, and that means we are going to see a massive wave of AI models in the next few years, which might be built on top of the existing AI models such as ChatGPT or Gemini or maybe they would be completely different. However, we are here to tell you that a company named Bioptimus is also building a foundational AI model, which is not built on top of any other existing AI model, and this model is also focused on biology. This Generative AI startup is based in Paris and says that since the data is challenging to find in this field, its model will be a huge success.
You must have also heard that ChatGPT is planning to raise a whopping $7 billion for its next round, which tells you that developing and improving AI models such as GPt-4 is not cheap. Bioptimus will also be a capital-intensive startup as it will train its models on expensive GPUs and hire talented researchers. That’s why the startup is raising a $35 million seed. Since Bioptimus can’t use publicly available data in this field, it faces the challenge of dealing with sensitive clinical data that isn’t publicly available.
As per a TechCrunch report, “Rodolphe Jenatton, the CTO of Bioptimus, has more experience in artificial intelligence, as he was a senior research scientist at Google. Several co-founders are also former researchers at Google DeepMind”. Bioptimus’ Co-founder, Jean-Phillippe Vert, told TechCrunch 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. Training very large-scale [foundational models] requires important resources in terms of data volume, computing power, and breadth of data modalities that are easier to unlock as a specific entity. As a ‘pure player’ in foundational models, Bioptimus is better set up to do this.” He also added, “Eventually, the AI we build will improve disease diagnosis and precision medicine and will help create new biomolecules for medical or environmental use,”
