AI specialists Enveda and Basecamp rake in the cash

AI-powered drug discovery companies Enveda Biosciences and Basecamp Research have completed impressive funding rounds – worth $311 million and $140 million, respectively – that reveal investor appetite for companies in the category remains strong.

Enveda said the proceeds of its Series E – which was led by Catalio Capital Management and takes the total raised by the company to over $845 million – will be used to advance three of its clinical-stage programmes into later-stage development.

The Boulder, Colorado-based company has reported positive phase 1 results this year for two of its therapies – ENV-294 for atopic dermatitis and asthma and ENV-308 for metabolic health – and plans to start additional studies of the pair in the coming months. Meanwhile, the round will also fund mid-stage trials of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) treatment ENV-6946.

Enveda will also use some of the proceeds to refine its AI drug discovery engine, PRISM, and bring additional candidates into clinical development. The company applies AI to the discovery of drugs from living organisms, mainly plants, and has developed a library of compounds that it thinks have never been explored by science.

New investors in the round include Durable Capital Partners, ICONIQ, Lightspeed, Surveyor Capital, accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Digitalis Ventures, and Alderline Group, which were joined by prior backers Baillie Gifford, Premji Invest, FPV Ventures, True Ventures, Kinnevik, Dimension, Lifeforce Capital, and Lux Capital.

London, UK-based Basecamp Research, meanwhile, also plans to use the proceeds from its Series C to refine and expand its EDEN foundation models, which bring together genomic data from millions of species and the design of new therapeutics, and advance its pipeline of preclinical-stage drugs towards the clinic, starting with an in vivo cell therapy. The $140 million adds to earlier rounds of $20 million and $60 million.

The company has said that the EDEN models offer a new way to carry out tasks like replacing faulty genes and reprogramming cells for therapeutic applications in areas like cancer and genetic disorders.

EDEN draws on the Trillion Gene Atlas, a project to compile genomic data from more than 100 million species, which Basecamp has been working on with Anthropic, NVIDIA, Ultima Genomics, and gene sequencing specialist PacBio.

The round was led by S32 and also scooped up Anthropic's Anthology Fund, NVIDIA, Catalio Capital Management, European Tech Collective, Firebrand River Capital, Inception Fund, King Philanthropies, NATO Innovation Fund, PostScriptum, Redalpine, The Rockefeller Foundation, Singular, Sovereign AI, and True Ventures.