Living Models Emerges from Stealth with $7M Seed
Living Models, a Paris- and Berkeley-based developer of foundation models for biological sequences like DNA and RNA, has raised $7M in seed funding. The startup focuses on plant biology through its BOTANIC family of models to accelerate crop trait discovery. The capital will boost computing resources and support development of larger BOTANIC models.
AI Agritech Funding Heats Up in 2026
The round arrives amid rising investment in AI for crop improvement. Biographica raised $9.5M in January 2026 for AI-driven crop design, while Heritable Agriculture secured a $5M Gates Foundation grant that month. Living Models differentiates with open-weight foundation models trained on over 1,600 plant genomes, targeting seed and breeding companies.
Eight-Year Trait Development Cycles Persist
Seed and breeding companies in the $60B crop protection market face development timelines exceeding eight years per trait, compounded by climate-related yield losses. Current methods struggle with predicting gene functions and trait associations efficiently. Foundation models address this by analyzing multi-omics data at scale.
BOTANIC Models Unlock Plant Genomics
Living Models released BOTANIC-0, a 1B-parameter transformer trained on more than 1,600 curated plant genomes. It predicts gene functions, regulatory elements, and trait associations, with open weights available on Hugging Face for community use. This marks the first foundation models dedicated to plant biology.
As CEO Cyril Véran noted:
"OpenAI trains on Reddit and Wikipedia to understand human language. We train on DNA, RNA, and gene expression to understand the language of life itself."
The approach shifts AI in biology from prediction to generative crop design.
Elite Team Drives Foundation Model Push
Backed by frontier AI and deep tech investors, the seed round signals conviction in Living Models' multi-omics strategy. The small team of 2-10, with PhDs and engineers from Huawei Noah's Ark Lab, Owkin, Datadog, Institut Pasteur, and Polytechnique, provides specialized expertise. Dual bases in Paris and Berkeley enable global collaboration.
Plant Genomics Market Scales to $20.8B
The plant genomics market stands at $13.1B in 2024, projected to reach $20.8B by 2030 at an 8% CAGR. Competitors like Inari raised $144M in early 2025 for AI/ML seed breeding. Living Models enters as AI accelerates trait discovery amid EU deregulation of genomic techniques.
Hiring Signals Expansion in Plant AI
Living Models has secured access to 120 NVIDIA B200 GPUs for training. The team collaborates with plant scientists from UF, INRAE, Paris-Saclay, and UC Berkeley. Recent hiring for an AI Scientist in foundation models for plant biology underscores plans to shrink breeding timelines from years to months.