Insider Brief
- Somite AI raised over $47 million in a Series A round led by Khosla Ventures to advance its DeltaStem platform, aimed at revolutionizing human cell therapy development using foundation models and proprietary AI.
- The company’s technology generates cell signaling data at 1000x the efficiency of existing methods, accelerating the development of therapeutic programs for diabetes, orthopedic, muscular, and blood disorders.
- Co-founded by AI and scientific leaders, Somite AI aims to achieve an “AlphaFold moment” for developmental biology, enabling scalable, reliable production of any human cell type.
PRESS RELEASE — Somite AI, a TechBio company leveraging foundation models and proprietary AI to accelerate human cell therapy development, closed its Series A funding round, raising more than $47 million. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from SciFi VC, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Fusion Fund, Ajinomoto Group Ventures, Pitango HealthTech, TechAviv, Harpoon Ventures, along with angel investors such as Dr. R. Martin Chavez (former Chairman of Recursion), and Fidji Simo (outgoing CEO of Instacart and incoming CEO of Applications at OpenAI).
Somite AI is building DeltaStem, a platform and foundation model designed to revolutionize the production of human cells. This funding positions Somite AI to accelerate key therapeutic programs, including beta cells for type 1 diabetes, articular cartilage for orthopedic applications, satellite cells for muscular diseases, and hematopoietic cells for blood disorders, and further develop the capabilities of its DeltaStem platform.
“We’re building the foundation model for the human cell,” said Dr. Micha Breakstone, Founder and CEO of Somite AI. “By generating the world’s largest cell signaling dataset at 1000x the efficiency of current methods, we’re training DeltaStem to deliver protocols with unmatched purity, scalability, and reliability. We are rapidly driving towards an AlphaFold moment for developmental biology, enabling the scalable production of any cell, for anyone.”
Somite AI’s proprietary capsule technology generates cell state transition data at an unprecedented scale, achieving efficiency 1000x greater than existing methodologies. This data feeds into the DeltaStem foundation model, significantly accelerating and optimizing the development of novel cell differentiation protocols.
“Traditional cell therapies are expensive, slow to develop, and unpredictable. AI can systematically solve these challenges,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures. “Somite AI’s foundation models, once fully developed and validated, will not only create value for their own pipeline, but have the potential to reshape the entire field of human cell therapy.”
Somite AI was co-founded by Dr. Micha Breakstone, a seasoned AI entrepreneur (Chorus.ai, acquired for $575 million), and Dr. Jonathan Rosenfeld, Head of the Fundamental AI Group at MIT, alongside prominent scientific co-founders:
- Prof. Olivier Pourquié, member of the National Academies of Science and Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School
- Prof. Allon Klein, James Prize recipient, Harvard Medical School
- Prof. Jay Shendure, member of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Washington
- Prof. Cliff Tabin, Chair of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, member of the National Academy of Sciences
Media Contact:
[email protected]
Website: www.somite.ai
