A newborn AI startup focused on biology studies has raised a large sum of cash to propel its research and continued development of its primary program.
EvolutionaryScale just announced that it has pooled C$194 million together in a seed funding round.
The fundraising was led by American investor Nat Friedman, New York’s financial firm Lux Capital and U.S. tech entrepreneur Daniel Gross. Nvidia Corp. (Nasdaq: NVDA) also contributed through its corporate venture arm NVentures while Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) assisted too.
LuxCapital’s co-founder Josh Wolfe described the seed round as a “ChatGPT moment for biology” in an interview with Reuters. Wolfe says EvolutionaryScale has created the first-ever large language model that designs novel proteins and other biological systems.
The AI developer’s aim is to use its technology for expediting drug discovery efforts, engineering microbes that can break down plastics in the environment and other applications, the company’s head scientist Alex Rives says.
In conjunction with the funding, the startup has also officially released its ESM3 AI model. This platform has successfully created a novel green fluorescent protein that EvolutionaryScale claims would take 500 million years to evolve in nature.
“Scientists can interact with ESM3, guiding it to create for a myriad of applications such as for medicine, biology research and clean energy,” the company described.
The program was taught with a dataset of nearly 2.8 billion proteins, EvolutionaryScale says.
“ESM3 is trained across the natural diversity of the Earth — billions of proteins, from the Amazon rainforest to the depths of the oceans, extreme environments like hydrothermal vents and the microbes in a handful of soil.”
BREAKING: EvolutionaryScale has raised a $142M Seed to build generative models for biology.
The round was led by Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Lux Capital.pic.twitter.com/tUfUHgj1Mn
— Chief AI Officer (@chiefaioffice) June 25, 2024
Read more: Verses announces Genius public beta preview and webinar June 20
Read more: Verses AI onboards chief product officer in push for AI product Genius
Others pool funds for nature-focused AI development
Verses AI Inc. (CBOE: VERS) (OTCQB: VRSSF) is another notable AI developer that recently raised significant capital for development of its flagship program. This company is the creator of Genius: an AI model that focuses on learning through examining biological processes.
The United Arab Emirates-based AI tech company Group 42 agreed to invest C$13.7 million into Verses last week.
Moreover, Verses closed a C$10 million private placement the previous month.
Verses AI is a sponsor of Mugglehead news coverage
rowan@mugglehead.com
