WhiteLab Genomics raises €23.2M to design genomic medicines that actually work in vivo — its ALFRED AI platform is winning Sanofi deals
Paris biotech WhiteLab Genomics on Tuesday closed a €23.2 million ($26 million) Series B led by AVP to scale its ALFRED platform — an AI system that designs the viral and non-viral delivery vehicles genomic medicines need to reach the right cells, then proves them out in vivo before pharma pays for them.
Paris biotech WhiteLab Genomics on Tuesday closed a €23.2 million ($26 million) Series B financing round to scale its AI-driven genomic platform, ALFRED, and expand its biotech partnerships across North America and Asia. The round was led by global investment platform AVP, which manages more than €2.5 billion in assets, with participation from new investors Yaday Health and Blast Club alongside existing backers Omnes Capital and Debiopharm Innovation Fund.
Founded in 2019 by David Del Bourgo, Lucia Cinque and Julien Cottineau, the company builds AI models that design targeted genomic therapies — and, crucially, the delivery problem those therapies die on. ALFRED, short for AI-Led Framework for Rational Exploration in Drug Design, designs viral vectors such as adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) and non-viral carriers like lipid nanoparticles, followed by experimental in vivo validation. Dealroom reports the round brings WhiteLab’s total funding to about $37 million, with the company running roughly 15 revenue-generating partnerships including Sanofi, Cytiva, Debiopharm, the University of Massachusetts, the Vision Institute and the Paris Brain Institute.
The hard part is delivery, not discovery
Genomic medicine’s bottleneck has never been inventing therapeutic payloads — it’s getting them into the right cells without them ending up elsewhere. WhiteLab’s recent work with the Paris Brain Institute is the kind of result investors paid for: AAV vectors designed by the platform crossed the blood-brain barrier with high precision while showing no detectable signal in the liver, a notorious off-target destination. “WhiteLab is building AI that designs genomic medicines that actually work in vivo, not just on paper,” said François Robinet, managing partner of AVP, in the announcement.
What the money buys
The capital injection funds four moves: expanding in vivo validation models beyond AAVs to non-viral delivery systems; scaling computational work on programmable synthetic genetic promoters; strengthening the Boston hub to support North American biopharma collaborations; and establishing a West Coast presence while exploring Japan and South Korea. The company plans to advance targeted treatments for complex conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, glioblastoma and lysosomal storage disorders. Following the round, Robinet and Dr. Daniel Teper, managing partner at Yaday Health, join WhiteLab’s board.
A services business with an AI core
WhiteLab’s model is notable for what it isn’t: the company doesn’t plan to take drugs to the clinic itself. Instead it gets paid to provide the platform and paid again on success as partners advance the assets. Dealroom notes the financing arrives as biopharma venture funding recovers — topping $10 billion in Q2, only the third quarter above that mark since early 2022, per PitchBook. Del Bourgo has said he is open to being acquired and that buyers have approached, though the company would also consider a US IPO, and that it now has two to three years of runway.
“AI can help us design better genomic medicines, but what ultimately matters is whether those designs work in living systems. We have already presented compelling results,” said CEO David Del Bourgo. The Series B is a bet that AI-designed delivery — validated in animals, not just simulated — is where genomic medicine’s economics finally start working.