Astromech Raises $20M to Build AI Models That Predict Evolutionary Change, Reaching $3.8B Valuation
核心洞察
Astromech (搜索), co-founded by Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church, secured $20 million in new funding led by Bob Nelsen, bringing total funding to $60 million and valuing the company at $3.8 billion.
The startup uses genomic datasets from de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences (搜索), spanning "3.8 billion years of biological history," to train AI models that forecast how living systems will change.
Astromech (搜索)'s initial focus is longevity (搜索) research, mapping 46 genes associated with longer lifespans, cancer (搜索) resistance, and cell maintenance, with data from long-lived species like Bowhead whales and cancer-resistant Asian elephants.
Astromech (搜索), an AI startup co-founded by Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist George Church, announced on August 20, 2026 that it had raised $20 million in new venture funding, bringing its total funding to $60 million and valuing the company at $3.8 billion. The round was led by Arch Ventures co-founder Bob Nelsen, alongside Peak 6, NeoGenesis Capital, Builders VC, and CA Investments. The new valuation nearly doubles the $2 billion figure the company reached in March 2026, signaling strong investor confidence in the project.
The company's core ambition is to build AI models that predict evolutionary changes in whole biological systems. Lamm, who is also co-founder of the de-extinction company Colossal, described the mission in a press release: "Biology runs the world and historically, we have only reacted to it. We can describe biology in extraordinary detail, yet we still struggle to anticipate what comes next. Astromech (搜索) is building the AI system predicting how living systems will change and where they are most likely to break."
At the heart of Astromech (搜索)'s models are the biological datasets that Colossal has collected during its research into bringing species back from extinction. These datasets provide insights into how species have changed over time — for example, where genes are similar between modern elephants and woolly mammoths, and where they differ. By working backwards, the models can predict how those genes will change in the future. The company describes its data as spanning "3.8 billion years of biological history."
The potential applications extend well beyond paleontology. Lamm noted that understanding how and why genes change as they evolve can help farmers breed better crops, enable pharma companies to find better drugs, and assist public health officials in identifying disease threats before they emerge. In a press release, the company framed its efforts as an attempt to build "something resembling an early-warning system for evolution," with the goal of predicting risks including threats to the food chain, disease susceptibility, and people becoming resistant to specific drugs.
Initially, Astromech (搜索) is focused on understanding longevity (搜索). The company is using its model to map 46 genes associated with longer lifespans, cancer (搜索) resistance, and cell maintenance. Its researchers are focused on data about long-lived animal species like Bowhead whales and animals that are resistant to cancer, such as Asian elephants. By tackling aging, the company aims to demonstrate that its "predictions can reliably translate into real-world results."
George Church explained the scientific rationale behind the approach: "Comparing living species by their genomes can fail to assign DNA differences to functional impacts. Most of the variations that matter for complex traits, for example, morphology and longevity (搜索), are regulatory rather than coding, so reconstructing the ancestral regulatory state, not just the ancestral protein, has the crucial explanatory power."
Lamm emphasized that the company's data gives it a competitive edge. "I don't think anyone has the geographic distance and the time distance that we have," he said. The new capital will be primarily focused on hiring research teams. Because Astromech (搜索)'s models are highly targeted for these specific problems, compute is not as much of an expense as it is for other AI companies, Lamm added.
Astromech (搜索) is currently in the research and development stage. The company intends to use genomic data developed by Colossal Biosciences (搜索) to train its AI models, with the goal of demonstrating what its technology will be capable of by first tackling the biology of aging.