Biotech

A fledgling French AI startup has raised $41 million to develop a foundational AI model for biology. Just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm as a super-smart generative AI tool capable of natural language conversation in text form, Bioptimus is taking that concept but training

Healthcare is proving to be one of the more lucrative industries for building AI solutions to speed up clinical, research, and administrative operations. Now, we have one of the latest examples of how that is playing out in terms of venture funding. Qventus, a startup that builds AI-based tools to

After studying burn victims and war veterans, entrepreneur Ran Ma hand-made a sock that contained sensors to detect foot ulcers. Now, her company, Siren, has secured $9.5 million, with an $8 million check from lead investor Mölnlycke Health Care to further the development and adoption of its diabe

Smart ring maker Ultrahuman took the wraps off a trio of extra shiny high-tech trinkets at CES 2025 on Tuesday, adding a premium jewelry collection to its range of wellness wearables. It’s given the Ring line the brand name Rare, a neat verbal echo of the company’s mainstream smart ring

Smart ring maker Oura announced on Thursday that it has closed a $200 million Series D funding round, bringing the company’s valuation to $5.2 billion. The round included participation from Fidelity Management and glucose device maker Dexcom. Oura says the new capital will allow it to e

In case you hadn't noticed, there are a lot of mental health startups out there these days, many of which were prompted to launch following the pandemic and the subsequent widespread focus on mental health. However, they often have scant relationships with clinical trials or healthcare systems.

Aqemia, a French startup that’s meshing “quantum-inspired physics” with machine learning to find new drugs, has raised $38 million in a fresh round of funding led by San Francisco-based VC firm Cathay Innovation. This is Aqemia’s second fundraise of the year — it announc

Many VCs, particularly newer firms, readily admit that 2024 has been a challenging year for raising fresh capital. Dimension Capital, a two-year-old venture outfit, had a different experience when raising its second fund.   “Every investor from fund one came back very quic

Back in the heady days of 2021, Heartcore Capital planned to focus on consumer technology with a $200 million fund. Fast-forward to 2024, and its latest fund will now “leaven the bread” of that thesis, with a fresh $180 million (€170 million) to go broader and more generalist than tha

Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B food tech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production

Using AI to accelerate biotech is fast becoming standard practice, and companies offering services to deploy the tech quickly are seeing big uptake and new investment. Cradle is one of these, focused on protein design — and it just raised $73 million to build out its labs and team. Cradle appear

Cancer, one of the most life-threatening diseases, is projected to affect over 35 million people worldwide in 2050 — 77% more than the estimated 20 million cases in 2022, according to the World Health Organization. Cancer survivors globally reached 53.5 million, and the recurrence rate of the dis

AI is finding its way into every corner of biotech and pharmaceutical research, but like other industries, it’s never quite as straightforward to implement as one would like. Converge Bio has built a tool for companies to make their biology-focused LLMs actually work, from “enriching

You've heard of car airbags deploying within milliseconds to protect passengers. How about an airbag for your knee? That's what former basketball hopeful Kylin Shaw is working on with his startup, Hippos Exoskeleton — a “knee sleeve” that measures stress on the knee joint an