Basecamp Research raises £105m Series C to develop AI-designed medicines

London-based biotech company Basecamp Research has raised £105 million in an oversubscribed Series C to develop medicines using frontier AI models trained on biological data from around the world.

The round was led by S32, with backing from Anthropic's Anthology Fund, Catalio Capital Management, European Tech Collective, Firebrand River Capital, Inception Fund, King Philanthropies, NATO Innovation Fund, NVIDIA, Redalpine, The Rockefeller Foundation, Singular, Sovereign AI and True Ventures. Senior figures from the pharmaceutical and biotech industries also participated, including André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of Roche.

Training AI on the world's biological data

Basecamp Research has developed a family of biological foundation models called EDEN, which are trained using its proprietary genomic dataset.

The company says its Trillion Gene Atlas contains biological data gathered through access and benefit-sharing partnerships across more than 30 countries and all seven continents. The dataset has been developed with partners including NVIDIA, Anthropic, PacBio and Ultima Genomics.

Rather than building an AI system for one specific biological problem, Basecamp is developing models designed to understand how DNA works across different forms of life. The technology can then be used to design potential biological products, including cell and gene therapies, enzymes and peptides.

From AI models to new treatments

The company's immediate focus is in vivo cell therapy, an approach designed to reprogramme a patient's own cells inside the body.

Basecamp combines its EDEN models with large serine recombinases, which can precisely integrate complex DNA sequences into the genome. The aim is to create cell therapies that can be more sophisticated and easier to administer than some existing approaches.

The company is initially targeting areas including cancer and autoimmune diseases, with preclinical work showing results across multiple disease areas and therapeutic approaches.

The challenge is now moving from promising research into clinical development. Traditional cell therapies can require highly complex manufacturing processes and can cost hundreds of thousands of pounds or dollars per patient. Basecamp's approach is intended to simplify how these therapies are designed and delivered.

A bigger opportunity for AI biotech

The new funding will be used to train the next generation of EDEN models and advance Basecamp's pipeline of AI-designed therapeutics towards clinical development.

The company is also strengthening its pharmaceutical partnerships. Richard Pearce, formerly of Biogen, has joined as Chief Business Officer, while S32 General Partner Andy Conrad, formerly CEO of Verily, has joined Basecamp's board.

Basecamp is headquartered in London and has offices and laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, giving the company a presence across two of the world's major life sciences markets.

For investors, the £105 million raise highlights the growing overlap between AI, biological data and drug discovery. The bigger test for Basecamp will be whether its models can consistently produce therapeutics that move successfully from computational design and preclinical research into human trials.

Could AI-designed medicines fundamentally change how new treatments are discovered and developed?

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