Looking to the past to engineer the future, Basecamp Research raises $20 million

London-based biotech startup Basecamp Research, not to be confused with the “other” Basecamp, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. The company’s knowledge graph, BaseData offers advanced DNA analysis and environmental monitoring aimed at connecting the dots and improving our understanding of the natural world.

Basecamp Research’s $20 million Series A round was led by Systemiq Ventures, with participation from Valo, Blue Horizon, True Ventures, and Hummingbird Ventures. Founded in 2019, Basecamp Research has now raised a total of $30 million. 

Basecamp designs protein products that provide biotech R&D teams access to more starting points, opening up protein-based research bottlenecks, and paving the way for the discovery of previously inaccessible proteins.

The startup’s approach to research and discovery is built to comprehend and recreate the collective intelligence of nature, a methodology which, according to the company, reveals previously unseen relationships between enzyme and protein classes. 

This approach allows the startup to design “function-first,” meaning that the data science team functions independently from sequence similarity, using structure prediction only as a verification mechanism. 

“At Basecamp, we know the answers to our greatest challenges can be uncovered in our environment,” commented co-founder Oliver Vince. “Less than one percent of the biochemistries in nature have been discovered–a fraction of that percentage has been fully characterized in the real world. Recent advances in bioinformatics, AI, and data science are enabling our team to map a world of untapped possibility, and we’re just getting started.” 

Basecamp Research expects to use the funding to expand the team size, fully validate internal products, and continue building a product portfolio in industries such as pharmaceuticals, nutrition, agriculture, and consumer goods.