构建AI虚拟细胞基础模型，「百曜科技」获数千万元天使轮融资

Company Overview - Baiyao Technology, an AI virtual cell platform company, recently completed several million yuan in angel round financing led by Fengrui Capital, with participation from Shunxi Capital and Baidu Ventures, and Mingde Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor [1] - The founding team of Baiyao Technology released a knowledge-enhanced, cross-species, billion-level data single-cell pre-training model in 2023, followed by a rapid iteration to launch the first graph-structured single-cell pre-training model [1][2] - Baiyao Technology's single-cell foundational model integrates biological prior knowledge, enhancing learning directionality and producing results that align closely with biological logic [1][3] Industry Trends - The "AI virtual cell" sector has gained significant attention in recent years due to advancements in technology, particularly in single-cell sequencing, which has led to an explosive growth of multi-omics data [2] - The emergence of self-attention mechanisms and self-supervised pre-training strategies has provided powerful tools for processing high-dimensional and complex life science data, enabling detailed characterization and dynamic simulation of cells [2] - Both the U.S. and China are actively promoting the use of foundational AI models for life simulation, with China's "14th Five-Year Plan" emphasizing the accelerated development of biotechnology and the establishment of major national scientific infrastructure in AI life sciences [2] Challenges and Opportunities - Constructing AI virtual cells is a complex and multi-dimensional challenge, requiring significant computational power and data resources, with potential investments reaching "hundreds of billions of dollars" [3] - The current AI virtual cell technology is still in its early development stages, with Baiyao Technology and similar companies having validated the theoretical path from 0 to 1 for their initial virtual cell models [3] - The characteristics of large models in this field suggest a strong Matthew effect, where companies that maintain a lead in high-quality data accumulation and algorithm iteration could achieve exponential optimization in efficiency and cost for life science research and biopharmaceutical industries [3] Investor Insights - Investors view cells as the fundamental unit of life and the main battleground for disease causation and drug development, with virtual cells expected to empower various scientific research and drug development scenarios, significantly reducing trial and error costs and timelines [4] - The integration of massive multi-omics data with Transformer algorithms enables the construction of high-fidelity virtual cells, breaking down barriers between mechanism research and application development, ushering in a new era for life sciences [5]