Basecamp Research, a London-based AI company, announced a $140 million Series C funding round to develop the next generation of AI-designed medicines that could reprogram the human body to repair itself. The oversubscribed round, led by venture firm S32, brings together an unusual coalition of backers including NVIDIA, Anthropic, The Rockefeller Foundation, and NATO Innovation Fund, signaling serious institutional confidence in the company's approach to drug discovery.

What Makes Basecamp's AI Approach Different From Other Drug Discovery Companies?

Unlike traditional drug discovery, which relies on screening thousands of chemical compounds, Basecamp uses a biological foundation model called EDEN (environmentally-derived evolutionary network) trained on what the company claims is the world's largest proprietary genomic dataset. This Trillion Gene Atlas draws on biological data collected through partnerships in more than 30 countries across all seven continents, giving the AI system an unprecedented understanding of how DNA works across all forms of life.

The key innovation lies in what EDEN can do with that knowledge. Rather than designing single-molecule drugs, Basecamp's AI generates long, complex DNA sequences that can be precisely inserted into a patient's own cells using large serine recombinases, a type of molecular tool that acts like biological scissors and glue. This enables in vivo cell therapy, meaning the reprogramming happens inside the patient's body rather than in a laboratory.

"We believe the future of medicine lies in reprogramming the body to repair itself. We design the models and the medicines to teach it how," said Glen Gowers, co-founder and CEO of Basecamp Research.

Glen Gowers, Co-founder and CEO, Basecamp Research

Why Does This Matter for Patients With Incurable Diseases?

Current cell therapies face two major obstacles: they are extraordinarily expensive to manufacture, often costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, and they are limited in the complexity of what they can deliver. Basecamp's platform aims to overcome both constraints by making cell therapies more sophisticated, more customizable, and simpler to administer.

The company has already demonstrated strong preclinical results across multiple disease modalities. In research published on bioRxiv, EDEN achieved a 63.2% functional hit rate across diverse DNA prompts when tested on DNA sequences it had never seen before. When EDEN-designed large serine recombinases were tested in human cells, 50% were active, and they achieved therapeutically relevant levels of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) insertion in primary human T cells, a critical benchmark for cancer immunotherapy.

The diseases Basecamp is targeting include cancer, autoimmune disease, and others where patients currently have few effective treatment options. The company's pipeline of EDEN-designed therapeutics is now advancing toward clinical development, with in vivo cell therapy as the first focus.

How Is Basecamp Building Its AI Training Data?

• Global Partnerships: The Trillion Gene Atlas was built with partners including NVIDIA, Anthropic, Pacific Biosciences (PacBio), and Ultima Genomics, drawing on biological data from access and benefit-sharing agreements in more than 30 countries across all seven continents.
• Diverse Data Sources: Unlike AI systems trained on a single type of biological data, EDEN is trained to recognize patterns across the full breadth of previously unseen biology, enabling it to generate potential therapeutic candidates directly from information about a disease.
• Multi-Modal Capabilities: The EDEN models can design cell therapies, gene therapies, enzymes, and peptides, making the platform applicable to a wide range of therapeutic approaches rather than a single disease or modality.

This approach to data collection and model training represents a significant departure from how most AI drug discovery companies operate. Rather than licensing existing genomic databases, Basecamp built its own dataset from the ground up, ensuring both the breadth and quality of the training material.

Who Is Backing This Vision, and What Does That Signal?

The investor list reads like a who's who of AI, biotech, and global health leadership. Beyond the lead investor S32, the round includes NVIDIA's venture arm, Menlo Ventures' Anthology Fund (a $100 million fund created in partnership with Anthropic), and participation from André Hoffmann, vice-chairman of Roche and co-chair of the World Economic Forum.

"The biotechnology revolution that began fifty years ago transformed how we make medicines. Personalized, AI-designed therapeutics represent the next transformation of that journey. Basecamp Research has built the full platform to deliver it, from biological data to trained models to designed therapies. This will be key in helping the industry to continue to innovate," stated André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman of Roche.

André Hoffmann, Vice-Chairman, Roche

Andy Conrad, General Partner at S32 and former CEO of Google's Verily, is joining Basecamp's board as a result of the funding. His appointment signals that S32 views this as a foundational technology platform rather than a single-product bet.

The funding also reflects growing confidence in Basecamp's ability to partner with established pharmaceutical companies. The company recently appointed Richard Pearce, formerly head of business development, strategy, and portfolio management at Biogen, as Chief Business Officer, a move designed to accelerate pharmaceutical partnerships.

What's the Connection Between Basecamp and Claude Science?

Basecamp has already demonstrated its AI models in action through a collaboration with Anthropic on Claude Science, an AI research workbench launched in June 2026. The platform features Basecamp's antibiotic design and vaccine prediction models, showing that EDEN-generated therapeutics can be integrated into tools that scientists use daily.

This integration is significant because it moves AI-designed therapeutics from the realm of pure research into practical scientific workflows. Researchers can now use Claude Science to explore antibiotic candidates or vaccine designs generated by EDEN, accelerating the feedback loop between AI prediction and experimental validation.

Basecamp's $140 million Series C represents a major inflection point for AI-designed therapeutics. The company has moved beyond proof-of-concept to a stage where it is building pharmaceutical partnerships, advancing candidates toward clinical development, and securing backing from some of the world's most influential investors in AI and healthcare. If the preclinical results translate to clinical success, the approach could fundamentally reshape how we treat diseases that have remained incurable for decades.