Apheris is rethinking the AI ​​data bottleneck in life science with federated computing

AI is largely dependent on data, however the vast majority of health information is unused for obvious reasons — mainly patient privacy, regulation and IP protection.

German entrepreneur Robin Röhm said it is “a fundamental challenge” to create AI solutions for related fields such as life sciences and pharmaceuticals. And not only that: collaboration can be difficult when it comes to sensitive data. take itRöhm’s startup aims to solve this through federated computing: making data securely available for AI model training without transferring it in a decentralized approach.

Its clients include Roche and several hospitals, he said.

The core philosophy of federated computing is that “computations are performed locally where the data resides, and only the outputs (such as model parameters) are federated centrally,” says Marcin Hejka, the company’s co-founder and managing partner. OTB Ventures. Hejka is now leading an $8.25 million Series A round in Apheris along with another deep tech investor. eCAPITAL.

Hejka believes Apheris could become a critical component in emerging federated data networks. “We see a maturing ecosystem of third-party software tools (open source federation engines, data quality tools, and security products),” TechCrunch said. “Apheris also provides seamless integration with complementary privacy-enhancing technologies (homomorphic encryption, differential privacy, synthetic data).”

Apheris’ new funding comes after a turnaround. Originally, Röhm and his co-founder Michael Höh founded the company in 2019 with the goal of creating a federated learning framework that would compete with open source approaches, based on their experience at their previous startup, Janus Genomics. But after growing up a Big seed round in 2022the duo made a major pivot in 2023 to focus on the data side and double down on pharmaceuticals and life sciences.

According to Rohm, it paid off. The startup found product-market fit with a new product launch in the last quarter of 2023 and has since quadrupled its revenue. Backed by existing investors including Octopus Ventures and Heal Capital, its new round brings its total funding to $20.8 million, which will help the company recruit top life science talent on the commercial side.

Apheris Compute Gateway, a software agent that serves as a bridge between local data and artificial intelligence models, is already being used by companies. AI Structural Biology (AISB) ConsortiumA joint initiative that sees members such as AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim, Johnson & Johnson and Sanofi collaborate on AI-driven drug discovery.

Protein complex prediction will be a topic that Apheris will focus on even more with this new funding. Although use-case agnostic, he recognizes that public data can add value when there is very limited, but more valuable and diverse data that won’t be unlocked unless life sciences companies feel safe doing so.

“Without addressing the concerns of data owners about providing data to AI, we don’t think we can really unlock the impact of AI, which is ultimately the core mission of what we’re building,” Röhm said.