- Basecamp Research raised $140 million in a Series C, valuing it at $800 million.
- Anthropic, Nvidia, S32 and NATO’s innovation fund backed the oversubscribed round.
- The cash trains new EDEN models and funds cell therapies designed to edit DNA inside the body.
Two Oxford graduates who spent a month camped on an Icelandic ice cap sequencing DNA in sub-zero conditions have built Basecamp Research, a London-based startup that has just raised $140 million in an oversubscribed Series C. The round values the company at $800 million, more than triple its last known valuation, and was led by S32.
The new round drew back Singular and True Ventures, alongside new backers including Nvidia, Anthropic’s Anthology Fund, Catalio Capital Management, European Tech Collective, Firebrand River Capital, Inception Fund, King Philanthropies, the NATO Innovation Fund, PostScriptum, Redalpine, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Sovereign AI.
From an ice cap to a foundation model
Basecamp was founded in 2019 by Glen Gowers, who holds a PhD in synthetic biology from Imperial College London, and Oliver Vince, whom he met while studying biochemistry and engineering at Oxford.
The company’s origin story is a ski expedition retracing a 1932 route across Vatnajökull, where the pair say they ran the first fully off-grid DNA sequencing on a polar ice cap. Basecamp is headquartered in Clerkenwell, London, with a second site in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and employs more than 50 people, per public hiring data.
It builds EDEN, a biological foundation model trained on what it calls the Trillion Gene Atlas, genetic data gathered through access and benefit-sharing partnerships in more than 30 countries.
Its first application is in vivo cell therapy: designing long DNA sequences and pairing them with serine recombinases, enzymes that insert that DNA directly into a patient’s genome, skipping the extract-modify-reinfuse process that conventional cell therapies rely on.
Basecamp says it has posted strong preclinical results across several disease areas, though none of its six disclosed programs has reached a clinical trial.
The competitive landscape
Basecamp’s rivals are raising far larger checks.
Chai Discovery, a San Francisco molecule-design startup, closed a $400 million Series C in July led by Index Ventures at a $3.8 billion valuation, pushing its total funding past $600 million. Isomorphic Labs, the Google DeepMind spinout led by Demis Hassabis, raised $2.1 billion in May, led by Thrive Capital with Alphabet, GV, Temasek, MGX, CapitalG and the UK Sovereign AI Fund also participating.
Both rivals focus on predicting molecular interactions; Basecamp’s pitch is narrower: a genomic dataset paired with technology that writes designed DNA directly into cells rather than only modeling how molecules behave.
Funding and what’s next
The Series C follows a $60 million Series B in October 2024, led by Singular, and a $19.8 million Series A in December 2022, led by Systemiq Capita, bringing Basecamp’s total funding to just under $220 million.
“We believe the future of medicine lies in reprogramming the body to repair itsel. We design the models and the medicines to teach it howf,” Gowers, Basecamp’s co-founder and chief executive, said.
Andy Conrad, general partner at S32 and the former chief executive of Google’s life-sciences unit Verily, called the combination of AI, biological data and scientific insight an opportunity to change “how we understand disease, discover medicines and ultimately improve and extend people’s lives.”
The AI drug discovery market is projected to grow from $5.09 billion this year to $17.56 billion by 2031, a 28.1% compound annual growth rate, according to MarketsandMarkets. Basecamp is still preclinical, with no disclosed date for a first human trial.
Whether a narrower, cell-editing approach can compete with rivals raising billions to predict molecules more broadly may come down to Pearce’s ability to land pharma partnerships before those larger, better-funded competitors close the gap.
