Insider Brief
- Visium SA, a Swiss AI and data company serving highly regulated industries, has closed its first institutional funding round co-led by Columbus Venture Partners and Concentric, alongside a syndicate of prominent tech founders including Thomas Wolf of Hugging Face and Sam Bourton of QuantumBlack.
- Founded in 2018 and bootstrapped for eight years, the Lausanne-based firm has grown to 100 AI experts and delivered over 250 solutions for clients including Roche, Novartis, and dsm-firmenich, and has been recognised among the Financial Times’ Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe.
- The funding will accelerate Visium’s expansion across Europe and the US, with the round accompanied by a series of strategic board and advisory appointments to strengthen its scientific and commercial expertise.
PRESS RELEASE — Visium SA, the leading artificial intelligence (AI) and data partner for enterprises in highly regulated industries, has announced the successful close of its first institutional funding round.
The round was co-led by Columbus Venture Partners and Concentric, with participation from a curated syndicate of unicorn founders who have built and scaled some of the most significant AI and technology companies of the last decade. The amount raised is not being disclosed.
Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, Visium has grown from a fully bootstrapped company to 100 AI experts across Europe, delivering more than 250 AI and data solutions for global leaders in life sciences, specialty chemicals, and other highly regulated industries.
Its clients include Roche, Novartis, and several top 20 pharmaceutical companies, as well as specialty chemicals leaders including dsm-firmenich, where Visium collaborated on a frontier AI innovation recognized at the Swiss Digital Economy Awards 2021.
With this funding, Visium is accelerating its expansion across Europe and the United States, scaling its team and product capabilities to bring its approach to a broader set of global enterprises. Visium has been recognized among the Financial Times’ Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe.
A syndicate of tier-one VCs and category-defining AI & tech founders
Columbus Venture Partners is a Spanish venture capital firm specialized in biotechnology and life sciences. With over €800 million in assets under management, the firm operates a differentiated investment model and has built a strong track record in developing industrial platforms for advanced therapies.
Concentric, the London-based “activist venture” fund co-founded by Kjartan Rist and Denis Shafranik, invests in software-driven businesses transforming traditional sectors and is known for its hands-on partnership model with founders.
Participating angel investors include:
- Sam Bourton: Co-founder & CTO of QuantumBlack
- Peter Lindholm: Co-founder and former Co-CEO of Frontier Car Group, Chairman and Co-founder of UNARIC
- Thomas Wolf: Co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Hugging Face
- Peter Sarlin (and syndicate): Founder and Chairman of PostScriptum, QuTwo, NestAI
A defining moment for Visium
Damià Tormo, General Partner, Columbus Venture Partners
“Our investment in Visium is driven by the clear thesis that generative AI is redefining operational processes across the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Its ability to design, automate, and optimize complex workflows in an agile manner enables pharma companies, CROs, and R&D teams to significantly reduce timelines and the operational burden associated with drug development. Visium sits at the core of this transformation, removing structural bottlenecks and accelerating data-driven decision-making.”
Denis Shafranik, Co-founder and Partner, Concentric
“Great companies are built by great founders, and Alen is one of them. From our very first conversation, his ambition and the outstanding team he has built made the decision easy. What Visium is doing is a blueprint for how traditional industries will be transformed. That mission sits at the heart of Concentric’s activist approach, and we’re proud to back them for the next chapter.”
Alen Arslanagic, CEO and Founder, Visium SA
“We bootstrapped Visium for eight years, knowing from the outset that creating transformative and sustainable value with AI would be much harder than most expected. That is why we have built productized and scalable components as well as end-to-end capabilities at the intersection of strategic transformation, deep industry expertise, AI, data & platform engineering. We believed only this combination could enable the deployment of production-grade AI systems that deliver strategic impact.
This round is not about capital alone. It is about aligning ourselves with investors and operators whose DNA we admire. Columbus brings unmatched experience scaling life sciences ventures, Concentric brings an activist partnership mindset that mirrors how we work with our own clients, and the operators joining us have built some of the most important AI and technology companies of the past decade. We could not be more ready for the next chapter.”
Boards to be strengthened
Visium is announcing strategic appointments to its Board of Directors:
- Sam Bourton: Co-founder of QuantumBlack
- Javier Fernández: Operating Partner, Columbus Venture Partners
- Denis Shafranik: Co-founder and Partner, Concentric
- Urban Lankes: Chairman of biGENIUS and Coople Switzerland
To deepen its scientific and commercial expertise, Visium is also announcing new appointments to its Advisory Board:
- Jayanth Sridhar: CEO of AveThera GmbH
- Dr. Christiane Hamacher: Former pharma and biotech executive and CEO
- Peter Sarlin: Founder and Chairman of PostScriptum, QuTwo, NestAI
Contact:
Adnana Pidro
adnana.pidro@visium.com
Featured image: Credit: Visium
