Tolemy Bio secures €1.4M to turn messy lab data into AI-ready intelligence
Tolemy Bio is a Cambridge-based biotech startup building an AI-enabled control panel for cell biology, addressing the persistent bottleneck in drug development, where experimental data is scattered across spreadsheets, lab equipment, notebooks, and disconnected files.
The startup has secured €1.4 million in pre-seed funding, led by Norrsken Evolve, with participation from Big Sur Ventures, JME Ventures, Masia, and a new, undisclosed UK stealth fund.
The company’s platform, Orbit, has been designed to sit on top of existing laboratory tools and consolidate fragmented experimental data into a single AI-native workspace. A second layer, which the company calls a “virtual cell”, aims to give scientists a Google Maps-style view of how living cells respond to changes in their environment, helping research teams answer questions about experiment status and plan next steps.
The pitch comes at a moment of tension in the biopharma sector. According to the company, up to 70% of biopharma firms identify AI as their most pressing technology investment, yet fewer than 3% of smaller players consider themselves AI-ready. The gap, Tolemy argues, is not ambition but infrastructure.
“Teams generate huge amounts of experimental data, but too often that data does not become reusable intelligence,” said Co-Founder and CEO, Alex Ward.
Ward founded the company alongside Caelan Anderson after the pair worked together at Vow, an Australian cultivated meat startup, where they encountered first-hand the limitations of existing tools for complex cell-based products. Their backgrounds span cell biology, computational modelling, lab automation, and software engineering.
Orbit has already attracted early interest from a mix of academic and industry partners, with MIT, the University of Cambridge, MFX, and Anthony Nolan among the organisations signed up for a phased rollout.
The startup has also partnered with California-based media supplier GeminiBio to develop aiMOS, a model-driven offering aimed at supporting custom supplement development for GeminiBio’s customers. The product targets a specific pressure point in cell therapy manufacturing: improving performance and consistency while controlling costs.
Norrsken Evolve General Partner Rebecka Löthman Rydå said the firm was drawn to Tolemy because it was “building the infrastructure needed to make complex therapies more understandable and controllable,” rather than layering AI onto an already broken workflow.
The pre-seed funding will be used to expand the company’s data generation, machine learning, and engineering capabilities. Though officially headquartered in Cambridge, the team plans to operate primarily out of Barcelona for the foreseeable future.
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