Warsaw-based AI and biology firm Ingenix has successfully closed a €13 million seed-extension funding round to advance its innovative approach to drug development. The investment, led by Sofinnova Partners with participation from Inovo VC and OTB VC, will scale the company's unique Biological Reasoning Engine. This funding will also support the launch of a new Qualified Access Program, designed to broaden collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech partners.
A Novel Architecture for Biological AI
Ingenix challenges the prevailing AI strategy in drug development, which relies on training ever-larger models on massive datasets. The company contends that biology's profound complexity, being non-linguistic and multi-modal, requires a more sophisticated architecture. This structural problem limits the effectiveness of general-purpose models that are simply retrofitted for complex biological research.
In response, the company has pioneered a new architecture called Modality Fusion, which powers its Biological Reasoning Engine. This system integrates best-in-class models across various biological scales and modalities, enabling it to reason directly across their combined representations. The engine is purpose-built to provide clear, evidence-backed insights for critical translational and clinical research and development decisions.
Investor Confidence and Strategic Vision
The new capital is instrumental in scaling the platform and expanding its application to pressing industry questions. Piotr Surma, CEO and co-founder of Ingenix, emphasized that the funding allows the company to apply its specialized AI where it can be most effective. He also highlighted the launch of the Qualified Access Program to extend the engine's capabilities to a select number of partners.
Lead investor Sofinnova Partners expressed strong confidence in Ingenix's unique strategy and experienced team, which includes founders of the AI company Applica. Partner Simon Turner noted the importance of building a reasoning layer that connects biology, chemistry, and clinical data into actionable intelligence. He stated that this is the most challenging yet valuable aspect of applying AI in life sciences.
Demonstrating Real-World Impact
The engine's power was recently showcased in a complex oncology project involving dual-payload antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) prioritization. A partner biotech faced thousands of potential payload configurations with limited capacity for experimental testing. Ingenix's platform was tasked with rapidly identifying the most promising candidates for further investigation and development.
In just minutes, the Biological Reasoning Engine produced 15 candidate combinations, a task that had previously taken the partner years and millions of euros in research. A blind review by the biotech's science team confirmed the engine identified known hypotheses, novel discoveries, and even candidates the biotech had internally validated but never published. This outcome highlights the system's ability to reason from first principles rather than simply matching patterns in existing data.
With its new €13 million in funding and a proven technology, Ingenix is positioned to make a significant impact on AI-driven drug discovery. The company's Modality Fusion architecture offers a compelling alternative to conventional methods, promising to accelerate research and uncover novel biological insights. The launch of its partner program marks a new phase of collaboration aimed at solving some of the most complex challenges in the pharmaceutical industry.