Key Takeaways
- Living Models has raised $7M in seed funding to develop AI foundation models for plant genomics, exiting stealth mode.
- The company introduced BOTANIC, a family of transformer models trained on genomic sequences from 43 different plant species.
- The funding round was co-led by Asterion Ventures and The Galion Project, with participation from Kima Ventures, STATION F, and several strategic investors.
- Living Models uses AI to interpret DNA as a language, aiming to accelerate the 8-year seed development cycle to better address climate-driven agricultural needs.
- The team has released its first research paper and made the BOTANIC open-weight foundation model available on Hugging Face for the research community.
Living Models Applies Transformer Technology to DNA
Living Models, an AI-driven biotechnology firm, has officially exited stealth with the announcement of a $7 million seed funding round. The company specializes in creating foundation models that treat DNA sequences as a “language of life,” moving beyond traditional computer vision and phenotype-based analysis to address biological challenges at the genomic level.
The company’s flagship release, the BOTANIC series, represents a significant technical milestone. These models are trained on genomic data from 43 phylogenetically diverse plant species. By applying the transformer architecture—the same technology behind large language models like ChatGPT—to nucleotides, Living Models aims to interpret, predict, and engineer biological outcomes with unprecedented precision.
Strategic Funding and Industry Alignment for Living Models
The $7 million round saw broad participation from the venture capital and academic sectors. Co-led by Asterion Ventures and The Galion Project, the round included support from Kima Ventures, STATION F, and the University of California, Berkeley. Other strategic investors included Artesian (Alternative Investments), Juniper Square, and Pascual Innoventures.
As a member of the STATION F Future 40 2024 batch and the Microsoft for Startups program, Living Models has quickly established itself within the European and American tech ecosystems. The company’s leadership emphasizes that this industry alignment provides critical commercialization pathways and long-term partnerships essential for the agricultural sector.
Accelerating Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change
Living Models is initially focusing on plant genomics to address the slow pace of agricultural innovation. Traditionally, developing a new seed variety can take up to eight years—a timeline the company argues is insufficient for the rapid pace of climate change. By utilizing the BOTANIC models, researchers can conduct in-silico experiments to identify traits for stress tolerance and yield stability more efficiently.
“Agriculture is already drowning—the seed industry takes eight years to develop a new variety,” stated Cyril Véran, CEO and Co-Founder of Living Models. “Climate doesn't wait eight years. We started with plants, but we're building for all of life.”
Open-Source Contribution and Research Validation
In conjunction with the funding news, Living Models has released its first research paper detailing the performance of the BOTANIC-0 models. These models, ranging from 100M to 1B parameters, have been made open-weight and are accessible on the Hugging Face platform. This move is intended to support reproducible research and allow the global scientific community to benchmark the models against existing genomic prediction tasks.
The company is led by founders Cyril Véran, Léonard Strouk, and Bertrand Gakière. Their combined expertise in AI and plant science positions Living Models to transition from plant-focused applications to broader biological systems in the future.
