Tolemy Bio Raises €1.4M to Build an AI Platform for Understanding and Controlling Cells

Biotech startup Tolemy Bio, based in Cambridge, has raised €1.4 million in pre-seed funding to develop a new AI-driven platform designed to help scientists better understand and control living cells. The round was led by Norrsken Evolve with participation from Big Sur Ventures, JME Ventures, Masia Ventures, and a UK-based stealth fund.

The investment supports development of Orbit, Tolemy Bio’s AI-native platform aimed at turning fragmented biological experiment data into structured insights for biopharma research and advanced therapies.

The Funding Round

The €1.4M pre-seed round, announced on May 12, 2026, gives the young company early resources to build its platform and begin working with partners across research and industry.

• Lead investor: Norrsken Evolve
• Participating investors: Big Sur Ventures, JME Ventures, Masia Ventures, and a UK-based stealth fund

According to reports, the capital will help expand the company’s engineering and machine-learning capabilities, increase data generation efforts, and support initial customer deployments of its platform.

What Orbit Is Designed to Do

Tolemy Bio’s core product, Orbit, is designed as an AI-native platform for cell biology that consolidates diverse experimental workflows into a unified system. In many laboratories, data is scattered across instrument outputs, spreadsheets, notebooks, and specialized software tools, making it difficult to analyze experiments systematically.

Orbit aims to bring these pieces together into a single environment where scientists can:

• integrate fragmented experimental data
• create virtual models of cellular systems
• run AI-powered analyses and research workflows

The goal is to help researchers interpret, predict, and optimize cellular behavior during drug discovery and biomanufacturing processes.

Some descriptions compare the platform to a “control panel” for cell biology, allowing teams to track experiments, model biological systems, and guide cell-based processes more systematically.

Why This Matters for Biopharma

Modern therapies—particularly cell and gene therapies—generate enormous volumes of experimental data. Yet much of that information remains siloed or difficult to interpret across experiments and teams.

Tolemy Bio is targeting this challenge by turning laboratory data into structured, reusable knowledge. Its platform is intended to help researchers move toward more data-driven therapeutic development, potentially improving how scientists design and control cell-based treatments.

The Founding Team

Tolemy Bio was founded in 2026 by Alex Ward and Caelan Anderson, who aim to build tools that make cell biology experimentation more systematic and computationally driven.

With the new funding, the company plans to accelerate development of Orbit and work with early research partners to refine the system in real-world biopharma workflows.

As AI continues to enter laboratory environments, platforms like Orbit represent a growing effort to bridge traditional wet‑lab biology with modern data infrastructure and machine learning.