Helical, a Luxembourg-based provider of a Virtual AI Lab for biology and pharma R&D, has raised $10M in seed funding led by redalpine. The platform enables biologists to conduct scalable in-silico experiments for target identification, biomarker discovery, and therapeutic design using Bio Foundation Models, without coding. It also offers ML engineers a Model Factory for personalization and VS Code integration. The capital will scale deployments with top-20 pharmas and expand the team.
Pharma AI Platforms Draw Capital
The raise comes as pharma accelerates AI adoption, with Bioptimus securing $76M for universal biology foundation models and Atomic AI raising $35M focused on RNA targeting. Helical differentiates by providing an application layer for deploying existing models in reproducible workflows, already in production at Pfizer and Tanabe Pharma America per The Next Web. This positions it amid a shift from siloed models to integrated labs.
Drug Development Faces $2B Hurdles
Pharma spends $300B annually on R&D, with average costs per drug at $2B and 90% clinical failure rates according to coverage. Traditional wet lab methods take years for hypothesis testing in areas like cardiometabolic and oncology. Current AI tools often lack reproducibility for pharma-scale experiments, leaving biologists dependent on ML experts.
Virtual Lab Bridges Bio-AI Divide
Helical's platform splits into a no-code Virtual Lab for biologists and a Model Factory for engineers, integrating models like Geneformer and Helix-mRNA-v0. Users personalize models to diseases, run in-silico experiments, and validate against biological evidence, achieving 3-5x higher hit rates versus traditional methods per company site. Launched on AWS Marketplace in July 2024, it streamlines enterprise procurement.
As Rick Schneider, CEO & Co-Founder, noted:
"Pharma teams need a system that turns foundation models into workflows… from hypothesis to decision in days instead of months."
Seed Backed by AI Luminaries
redalpine led the round, joined by Gradient, BoxGroup, Frst, and angels including Aidan Gomez (Cohere CEO) and Clément Delangue (Hugging Face CEO) per Tech.eu. This follows a €2.2M pre-seed in 2024. Investor Daniel Graf highlighted the transition to virtual AI labs as bio models converge with LLMs per Forbes. The syndicate signals conviction in Helical's pharma orchestration.
AI Drug Market Scales to $10B
The AI in drug discovery market stands at $3.25B in 2026, projected to reach $10.29B by 2032 at 25.94% CAGR per Mordor Intelligence. Trends favor multimodal foundation models and agentic workflows, driven by data explosion and regulatory nods to in-silico methods. Helical rides this with deployments compressing timelines from years to weeks.
Founders Blend Elite Tech-Bio Expertise
Co-founders Rick Schneider (ex-Amazon, Celonis) and Maxime Allard (ex-IBM, PhD Imperial) handle scaling, joined by MD Mathieu Klop for domain insight. Head of Science Volker Bergen created scVelo, a key single-cell RNA tool cited in Nature Biotechnology, from his time at Cellarity ($274M raised) per leadership research. This mix powers bio foundation model applications.
Scaling with Pharma Pilots
Post-funding, Helical eyes team growth in ML, comp bio, and BD, building on hires like Oxford ML engineers. Production with Pfizer (biomarkers, gene therapy) and Tanabe (ALS targets) validates the platform per recent activity. AWS integration and open-source traction (Helix-mRNA-v0: 50k downloads) fuel national expansion.