RNA sequencing startup Biostate AI raises $12M in Series A funding led by Accel

AI and RNA sequencing firm Biostate AI on Tuesday raised $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel. The round also saw participation from Gaingels, Mana Ventures, InfoEdge Ventures, as well as returning backers Matter Venture Partners, Vision Plus Capital, and Catapult Ventures.

The AI startup will use the fresh capital to expand access to integrated precision medicine, starting with RNA sequencing (RNAseq) services for US-based molecular research. 

Founded in 2023 by David Zhang and Ashwin Gopinath, Biostate AI is building generative AI models to predict disease progression and drug response using RNA sequencing data.

“Rather than solve the diagnostics and therapeutics as separate, siloed problems for each disease, we believe that the modern and future AI can be general purpose to understand and help cure every disease. Every diagnostic I’ve built was about moving the answer closer to the patient. Biostate takes the biggest leap yet by making the whole transcriptome affordable,” said Zhang, Co-founder and CEO of Biostate AI, in a statement. 

At present, the firm is focused on making RNA sequencing more accessible and developing predictive models that can support clinical decision-making. 

The Houston, Texas-based firm is working to remove barriers in RNA sequencing by combining biochemical methods with generative AI. By reducing the cost of RNAseq and standardising workflows, the company is helping researchers scale their work and generate reliable data. 

“Just as ChatGPT transformed language understanding by learning from trillions of words, we're learning the molecular language of human disease from billions of RNA expressions from millions of samples. We’re doing for molecular medicine what large language models did for text—scaling the raw data so the algorithms can finally shine,” said Gopinath, Co-founder and CTO of Biostate AI, and a former MIT assistant professor. 

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The company's patented wetlab technologies, such as BIRT, enable large-scale collection of transcriptomic and genomic data. With operations in Houston, Palo Alto, Bengaluru, and Shanghai, Biostate AI serves hospitals, academic institutions, and biotech companies globally.

“Biostate is building the foundation model for molecular medicine by pairing deep wet lab innovation with AI to unlock RNAseq at unprecedented scale and affordability. Just as OpenAI used massive datasets to decode language, Biostate is decoding the molecular signals that govern human health," said Shekhar Kirani, Partner at Accel.

"We believe David, Ashwin, and the team are laying the groundwork for a new era of diagnostics and therapeutics, and we’re thrilled to partner with them on this journey,” he added.

Biostate AI has raised over $20 million to date and is expanding its customer base through over than 100 pilot projects across various disease indications, including leukaemia (in collaboration with Cornell) and multiple sclerosis (with the Accelerated Cure Project).

Since launching its commercial offering two quarters ago, the company claims to have processed over 10,000 RNAseq samples from more than 150 partners and clients.

Some of the angel investors in the company’s earlier seed round include Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic), Mike Schnall-Levin (CTO, 10x Genomics), and Emily Leproust (CEO, Twist Bioscience).