Sofinnova Partners Teams With NVIDIA to Boost European AI in Life Sciences

Sofinnova Partners, a prominent European life sciences venture capital firm based in Paris, London, and Milan, has announced a strategic collaboration with NVIDIA. The partnership aims to provide substantial Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) credits to select companies within Sofinnova's portfolio, granting them access to the powerful computational resources typically reserved for tech giants in Silicon Valley. This initiative supports startups in the fields of biopharma, population health, and digital medicine, enabling them to run complex biological data sets and computational models more efficiently and rapidly. Four innovative European digital medicine startups—BioCorteX, Bioptimus, Cure51, and Latent Labs—will benefit from this collaboration, gaining access to NVIDIA Blackwell and other NVIDIA architecture GPUs via NVIDIA DGX Cloud Lepton. These resources will significantly accelerate their data processing capabilities, allowing tasks that once took months to be completed in a matter of days. One standout example is Cure51, a leader in decoding the biology of exceptional cancer survivors. By utilizing NVIDIA Parabricks, a GPU-accelerated genomics toolkit, Cure51 achieved a 17x faster processing time and more than 2x cost savings compared to traditional CPU methods. This breakthrough will enhance Cure51's ability to analyze complex genomic data, scale survivor-based insights, and potentially revolutionize cancer research. NVIDIA DGX Cloud Lepton, an AI platform and marketplace, provides developers with access to global AI infrastructure. This platform integrates seamlessly with softech startups, offering them the computational backbone necessary to compete with and outperform established players in the industry. Antoine Papiernik, Chairman and Managing Partner at Sofinnova Partners, emphasized the importance of this collaboration, stating, "The convergence of biology, AI, computation, and data isn't just our investment thesis—it's the defining battleground of the next decade. By securing access to NVIDIA’s infrastructure, we're not just funding companies; we're empowering them with the tools to redefine what's possible in drug discovery, precision medicine, and sustainable solutions." To further illustrate the impact of this partnership, let's delve into some specific initiatives and companies: Basecamp Research: This London-based Inception startup has developed BaseData, the world's largest and most diverse biological dataset for generative AI in life sciences. BaseData contains over 938 billion new biological sequences and more than a million previously unknown species, making it 30 times faster and growing up to 1,000 times faster than UniRef 50, a widely used public database. By leveraging NVIDIA BioNeMo Framework on the NVIDIA DGX Cloud Lepton platform, Basecamp can train next-generation foundation models, overcoming traditional bottlenecks in commercial biopharma research. Phil Lorenz, Chief Technology Officer at Basecamp Research, highlighted, "Data-optimal scaling is the key to overcoming the real-world limitations of current biological models. Combined with NVIDIA’s compute and AI stack, we’re training models that can understand and generate biology like never before." Proactive and Accessible Transformation of Healthcare (PATH): Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, the largest NHS Trust in the U.K., is launching PATH in collaboration with General Catalyst and Inception startups Hippocratic AI and Sword Health. PATH aims to transform healthcare delivery by integrating advanced AI agents that automate tasks such as patient outreach, history-taking, and referral validation. This initiative seeks to reduce specialty care waitlists, improve pain management, and streamline triage processes. Munjal Shah, founder and CEO of Hippocratic AI, stated, "Our safety-focused generative AI agents can enable healthcare abundance in the U.K. With more personalized care, patients can feel more supported and heard, improving outcomes." Virgílio Bento, founder and CEO of Sword Health, added, "Our AI Care platform transforms the way care is delivered, turning waiting lists into recovery journeys. Together, we can reduce waste in healthcare and materially improve clinical outcomes." Pangaea Data: This Inception company, headquartered in London and San Francisco, is using the NVIDIA NeMo Agent toolkit and NIM microservices to identify patients with rare and hard-to-diagnose diseases. Their platform calculates clinical scores required for diagnosis, mimicking a clinician’s manual review process for higher accuracy. Vibhor Gupta, founder and CEO of Pangaea Data, noted, "The NeMo Agent toolkit and NVIDIA NIM microservices enable us to reduce the time taken to configure our platform for each disease condition from weeks to a single day, helping accelerate our mission of improving patient outcomes globally." Pangaea's platform is currently being deployed in health systems across the U.S., U.K., Spain, and Barbados, contributing to a population health initiative led by the Prime Minister of Barbados. The collaboration between Sofinnova Partners and NVIDIA is not limited to these startups. Top European healthcare and life sciences VCs can offer their leading portfolio companies early access to DGX Cloud Lepton, providing 25 NVIDIA H100 GPU nodes for three months along with specialized support. This access is particularly crucial for early-stage biotech companies seeking to scale into new markets requiring localized and sovereign compute. Other notable startups benefiting from this partnership include U.K.-based Sensible Biotechnologies, which reduced its optimization cycles for cell-based mRNA therapeutics design from 15 days to just one, and U.K.-based Molecular Glue Labs (MGL), which validated new protein engineering approaches. These advancements demonstrate the potential of regional innovation labs and cloud partners to empower early-stage biotechs and drive forward the field of healthcare and life sciences. Industry experts see this collaboration as a significant move in the realm of AI-driven healthcare innovation. They believe that by equipping startups with state-of-the-art computational resources, Sofinnova and NVIDIA are fostering a new era of medical breakthroughs that can address pressing issues such as aging populations, staffing shortages, and rising healthcare costs. Additionally, the combination of robust datasets, powerful AI platforms, and efficient computational tools positions these startups to lead in the global market, enhancing health outcomes and promoting sustainability. Sofinnova Partners, founded in 1972 and managing over €4 billion in assets, has a long history of backing over 500 companies and creating market leaders worldwide. Their hands-on approach in healthcare and sustainability investments, coupled with the recent infusion of NVIDIA's AI technology, underscores their commitment to driving meaningful change in the life sciences sector. For more information on the partnership and its impact, visit sofinnovapartners.com or learn more about NVIDIA Inception startups at NVIDIA GTC Paris, taking place June 10-12 at VivaTech, where the keynote address by NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang will highlight these advancements. The collaboration between Sofinnova Partners and NVIDIA represents a pivotal step forward in the fusion of AI and life sciences, setting the stage for accelerated drug discovery, improved patient care, and enhanced medical research. As these startups leverage NVIDIA's cutting-edge technology, they stand poised to make substantial contributions to global healthcare and innovation.