BIOS Health raises significant funding from Silicon Valley and elsewhere

Cambridge company BIOS Health, a pioneer in the development of AI-driven precision medicine for the nervous system, is set to scale fast after clinching a major but undisclosed venture round supported by top investors and industry leaders.

Founded in 2015, BIOS Health has built a powerful neural data and AI platform to accelerate the emerging bioelectronic and AI-driven drug discovery industries and emerged as a leader in the neurotech space. 

Major institutional investors in BIOS include tech-bio pioneers Selvedge Venture; XTX Ventures, which has distinguished itself as expert at investing in companies with machine learning as a core technology; AI-focused Real Ventures; and Silicon Valley pioneers Fifty Years and Y Combinator (W’17, where the BIOS founders were mentored by Sam Altman). 

Global leaders in artificial intelligence, biotech, healthcare and neurotech have also invested in the company including Lord David Prior, former Chair of the NHS; Dr Mark Slack, founder of medical robotics unicorn CMR Surgical; global healthcare and biotech focused hedge funds and other patient capital leaders; a syndicate of current and former senior executives from companies including Genentech, Roche, Boston Scientific, Siemens, Bain and Goldman Sachs. 

Emil Hewage, CEO and co-founder of BIOS, said: “BIOS is privileged to continue to gain backers of extraordinary quality, experience and diversity. Investors are seeing the fundamental value of our technology combined with the once-in-a-generation chance to establish a market leading precision medicine business for an entirely new type of health data – our neurome. 

“With similar potential as the first genome sequencing and editing businesses of the previous cycle, we are excited to be bringing our technology to leading clinicians and commercial partners and are humbled in our investors’ conviction in BIOS – especially within the context of a volatile market.”

Lord David Prior added: “BIOS reminds me of early genomics pioneers, establishing a foundation for a new ecosystem of precision medicines at scale. BIOS’s neural digital technology has the chance to make data-driven clinical trials cheaper, create better medicines with fewer side effects and alleviate the huge burden of chronic disease for healthcare systems.”

Earlier this year, the NIH and a consortium of major healthcare centres including the University of Minnesota, the Mayo Clinic, and Stanford University, chose BIOS’ technology to power for its major project, REVEAL. Taking place in eight clinics across the globe over three years, the new NIH REVEAL programme will be the largest ever single clinical study of human neural data.

The team behind the study hope it will have a similar impact on the field of medicines for human chronic disease as the Human Genome studies have had on treatments for cancer and rare disease.

As core partner, BIOS is providing the software infrastructure for the project, and will be instrumental to its success. This also means BIOS’ technology will be foundational for the next wave of precision medicines – neural digital therapies. 

Co-founded by Cambridge University researchers Emil Hewage, a computational neuroscientist, and Oliver Armitage, a biomechanical engineer, BIOS is made up of a wide range of experts from neuroscience, machine learning, software engineering, applied biomaterials, biotechnology and medicine. 

Advisors include Oxford University Professors David Paterson and Tim Denison, CEO of Candel Therapeutics Paul Peter Tak, and IQVIA VP of Genomic and Precision Medicine Joanne Hackett (Chair of the BIOS Board).