startups
Tolemy Bio lands €1.4M to power AI-driven cell biology
TechEU
May 12, 2026 · 2 min listen
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Tolemy Bio lands €1.4M to power AI-driven cell biology
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Cambridge-based biotech startup Tolemy Bio has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding to advance its AI-enabled technology for cell biology research and biopharma development. The round was led by Norrsken Evolve, with participation from Big Sur Ventures, JME Ventures, Masia, and a new UK-based stealth fund. Founded by Alex Ward and Caelan Anderson, Tolemy Bio is developing Orbit, a system designed to help researchers better understand, interpret, and optimise living cells used in modern therapies and drug development. The company is focused on a longstanding challenge within biopharma and cell biology: while living cells are central to areas such as cell therapies and therapeutic proteins, experimental workflows remain highly manual and fragmented. Research data is often spread across spreadsheets, lab equipment, notebooks, and disconnected systems, limiting the ability of teams to effectively apply AI tools to drug development and manufacturing processes. Orbit is designed to bring these fragmented workflows into a single AI-native environment. The system connects existing laboratory tools and experimental data sources, while also incorporating virtual cell models and AI research agents intended to help scientists analyse cellular behaviour and guide experimental decision-making. Alex Ward, co-founder and CEO of Tolemy Bio, said the company was founded to address the difficulties researchers face in interpreting and reproducing complex cell biology experiments. Our platform, Orbit, is designed to connect experimental data with AI models,” said Ward. “Our goal is to make complex cell biology easier to interpret, optimise, and apply to real therapeutic development. The newly raised funding will be used to expand Tolemy Bio’s data generation, machine learning, and engineering capabilities, continue development of Orbit, and support early customer and partner deployments. While headquartered in Cambridge, the company says much of its operational activity will continue from Barcelona. Tolemy Bio’s long-term goal is to build a virtual-cell platform that helps biopharma companies move beyond trial-and-error experimentation towards more precise and data-driven approaches to understanding and controlling living cells.
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