Basecamp Research raises $140M Series C with Nvidia and Anthropic backing AI-designed cell therapies
The AMW Read
A known AI-bio player raises a sub-$500M Series C with frontier-lab investors (Anthropic, Nvidia), incrementally updating the segment's capital roster without resolving an open debate.
Named counterparties: Anthropic
Basecamp Research raises $140M Series C with Nvidia and Anthropic backing AI-designed cell therapies
Basecamp Research, a London-based biotech founded in 2019, closed a $140M Series C led by S32, the California firm founded by Bill Maris. Nvidia's venture arm NVentures returned as an investor, joined by Anthropic's Anthology Fund (a partnership with Menlo Ventures), Catalio, the NATO Innovation Fund, Rockefeller, European Tech Collective, and the UK's Sovereign AI Fund. Returning backers include Firebrand, River Capital, King Philanthropies, and Redalpine. The round brings Basecamp's total funding to $225M; per the AI Market Watch index, which tracks roughly 5,000 companies (coverage, not a census), the company's previously recorded funding stood at $85M. Basecamp will use the capital to train a new generation of its Eden biological foundation models and advance a pipeline of AI-designed therapeutics, starting with in vivo cell therapy that reprograms a patient's cells inside the body rather than outside it.
The round is notable less for size than for who signed the check. Anthropic investing directly in a genomic-AI drug developer, alongside Nvidia's continued backing, shows frontier model labs treating biological foundation models as an adjacent capital-allocation target, not just a licensing partner. Basecamp trains its Eden models on what it describes as the world's largest proprietary genomic dataset, assembled through partnerships across more than 30 countries — a data-moat strategy that mirrors how foundation model labs treat proprietary corpora as competitive advantage. The presence of NATO's Innovation Fund and the UK's Sovereign AI Fund also signals state-linked capital treating domestic AI-bio capability as a strategic asset, not just a commercial bet.
For builders and investors, the signal worth tracking is whether Basecamp's claimed preclinical results across multiple disease areas convert into IND filings, since the in vivo cell therapy manufacturing-cost argument only holds if clinical data confirms it. Frontier AI labs acting as direct investors in vertical bio-AI is a pattern worth watching for other genomic and drug-discovery startups seeking differentiated capital beyond traditional life-science VCs.
