Helical raises $10M to scale virtual pharma AI lab

There are over 10,000 known diseases that affect humans. Last year, the pharmaceutical industry got approval for roughly 50 new drugs. That is the bottleneck we set out to fix.

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Two years ago, Maxime, Mathieu, and I left our jobs with a conviction: biological foundation models will fundamentally change the way scientists discover drugs. Not because AI replaces researchers, but because it lets them test hypotheses computationally before spending months in a physical lab trying endless combinations.

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What was missing was not another model. It was a system scientists could actually use.

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So we built Helical, a virtual AI lab that transforms biological foundation models into reproducible discovery systems. An application layer where every scientist can run in-silico experiments at the speed of inference.

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As AI in pharma moves beyond proofs of concept, the winners will not just build better models. They will build systems scientists can trust, run, and reproduce.

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Thank you to redalpine (Daniel, Marc), Gradient (Vig), Frst (Bruno), BoxGroup (Claire and Nimi), and incredible angels including Aidan Gomez, Ivan Zhang, Clem Delangue, Mario Götze, and many more, for backing this mission.

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Most importantly, a huge thank you to the Helical team for your relentless dedication. We are proud to be working with you.

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Thank you also to Axios (Katherine) and Forbes (David Prosser) for covering the round.