Helical’s virtual AI lab provides an application layer that converts biological foundation models into reproducible, decision-ready in-silico workflows.
Helical, a biotechnology company developing a virtual AI lab for pharmaceutical research and development, has raised $10 million in seed funding. The round was led by redalpine, with participation from Gradient, BoxGroup, and Frst, alongside angel investors including Aidan Gomez (CEO of Cohere), Clement Delangue (CEO of Hugging Face), and Mario Götze.
Founded in early 2024 by Rick Schneider, Maxime Allard, and Mathieu Klop, Helical was established to address a key bottleneck in drug discovery: the limited throughput of physical experimentation. While biological foundation models enable scientists to test hypotheses computationally, many pharmaceutical teams still face challenges in translating model outputs into reproducible and actionable scientific decisions.
Helical aims to bridge this gap by providing an application layer that integrates computational predictions with biological validation, enabling more efficient and collaborative research workflows.
Its platform functions as a virtual AI lab, designed to transform bio foundation models into reproducible discovery systems. It features two interconnected components: the Virtual Lab, tailored for biologists and translational scientists, and the Model Factory, built for machine learning engineers and data scientists. By operating on shared data, models, and results, the platform facilitates collaboration across traditionally siloed teams and supports evidence-based decision-making throughout the discovery process.
According to Rick Schneider, co-founder of Helical, meaningful drug discovery is driven by systems that combine and operationalise model insights rather than by models alone.
Pharma teams need a system that turns foundation models into workflows scientists can run, validate, and defend. We built Helical to make in-silico science reproducible at pharma scale, so teams can go from hypothesis to decision in days instead of months.
Helical is working with several top-20 global pharmaceutical companies. Across applications such as target identification, biomarker discovery, and therapeutic design, the platform has supported significant reductions in discovery timelines and facilitated expansion into additional therapeutic areas.
Operating within an industry characterised by rising research and development costs and extended timelines, Helical seeks to enhance the efficiency and reliability of drug discovery.
The newly secured funding will be used to deepen deployments across therapeutic areas with existing clients, expand engagement with additional pharmaceutical organisations, and further develop the platform’s evidence layer to improve performance across diseases.