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How This Bio-AI Start-up Got Funding

How This Bio-AI Start-up Got Funding

Lessons on how to approach the early stages of being a start-up

Peter Juel Jensen
January 18, 2024

Pioneer AI: Checking the Nordic AI Pulse.
Welcome to the 17th edition of The Nordic AI Pulse, the weekly newsletter from Pioneer AI, our Nordic-focused AI investment fund. Dive in for a roundup of AI news, deals, and insights covering the Nordic region.

📚 In This Issue:

How Bio-AI Start-up Raised its Initial Funding Round
Nordic News Roundup
Cool Tools and Companies
Please “Steal” This Start-up Idea
Nordic AI Funding News
Podcast Insights
Upcoming: Nordic AI Events You Shouldn't Miss

Pioneer Insights

How Bio-AI Start-up Raised its Initial Funding Round

Mirko Ceriani (R), along with Tailwind’s Christopher Workman (C) and Lorenzo Carvelli (L).

I spoke to Tailwind Biotech’s co-founder, Mirko Ceriani, about the start-up’s journey to secure initial funding and what other companies and entrepreneurs might be able to learn from it. The conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

1: Could you describe your solution and its market?

Mirko: We’re a biotech company founded in 2022. We use proprietary AI technology to design best-in-class synthetic DNA sequences that help biotech companies make biomanufacturing processes more effective and efficient worldwide. Those processes are core to manufacturing biomaterials and biomolecules in industries like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and food and beverage.

The convergence of advanced computational techniques like AI and the expanding scope of biological research is creating a strong innovation wave in the biotechnology field that we are very excited to be part of.

2: What were some primary challenges you encountered early on, and how have you overcome them?

Mirko: One example was structuring our service offering and delivery in a way that made it easy for the customer to understand our technology's transformative value and impact on their bioproduction activities.

In-depth conversations with industry players and potential customers have helped us evolve our understanding of what they value, their challenges, and what related solutions they are looking for.

As a result, we have adjusted the scope of our offering, adopting, at times, a more consulting-like approach where we collaborate with the customers on tailoring our technology to the specific issues they are facing.

3: You successfully secured funding in 2023. Can you describe the process and how you made your company attractive to investors?

Mirko: Working with AI and applying it to a thriving field like biotechnology definitely helped attract investors’ attention. We received interest from different investors since our incorporation. However, we wanted to wait to pursue diluting investment rounds, preferring smaller soft grants to begin with. These grants helped us get things going while performing our market analysis and refining our product and strategy.

We were accepted into the Innofounder Danish start-up accelerator program. Throughout 12 months, we receive seed funding, mentoring and industry expert sparring that helps develop our technology and market presence while preparing for scaling.

As our market validation phase has matured and we have proven customer interest, including closing our first sales, we are now ready to pursue our first diluting investment round.

We plan to interest investors primarily by showcasing the strength and innovation of our technology, proven customer interest, and an ambitious business plan to become a global leader in applying AI to genetic engineering.

4: As a Nordic-based AI company, do you feel that AI in the region has some specific challenges or opportunities?

Mirko: The Nordics are proven fertile ground for start-ups and innovation. However, the region has so far produced relatively little groundbreaking AI-related innovation compared to other start-up hubs.

One reason may be the imbalance in size, financial strength and appetite for entrepreneurial risk of many Nordic VC/financing entities compared to their peers around Europe (e.g., the UK or France) or the US.

The funding game in the Nordics is much smaller, with much tighter boundaries. An improvement here would help more Nordic AI companies launch, innovate, and thrive.

5: With the rapid advances in AI, the technical bar for launching an AI start-up or solution has been lowered. However, getting a start-up off the ground is still a challenging feat. What would be your advice for individuals considering starting an AI company?

Mirko: Anyone with AI software skills and a strong idea should get their hands dirty, take that chance, and try to go full-time on it.

Right now, opportunities in AI are endless. We are at a turning point of technological innovation.

Consider institutions like Innovation Fund Denmark, which help entrepreneurs, including us, give their ventures a go.

We firmly believe in skill diversity that mixes hard and soft skills, blending, for instance, computational and communications skills.

We have leveraged team diversity in know-how and professional backgrounds from our foundation to solve many of our day-to-day start-up challenges.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the story and Tailwind Bio’s fundraising approach. Let me know on the Pioneer AI LinkedIn page here.

🎙Nordic News Roundup

AI expert’s advice for 2024: Study neural networks. [NO] (Kode24)
Danish media group bets on the benefits of launching a joint AI unit. [DK] (Finans) (Paywall)
Twenty-seven ways that CEOs in companies of all sizes can use AI. [SE] (Vision)
A new survey shows that one in four Norwegian companies are actively using AI. [NO] (NHO)
Consultancy companies are spending billions of dollars on AI. [SE] (ComputerSweden)
5600 billion Norwegian Kroner. According to a new study, that is how much AI can add to the country’s economy. [NO] (Nettavisen)
There is a massive increase in budgets for AI in large-scale enterprises. [DK] (Børsen) (Paywall)
Can an AI-powered pillow really stop you from snoring? [NO] (TEK.NO)
Why Danish companies stand to gain from the launch of Open AI’s new GPT Store. [DK] (Via Ritzau)
Norwegian meat-processing AI is quickly becoming a darling for American AI investors. [NO] (Shifter) (Paywall)

🛠️ Cool Tools & Companies

FinetuneDB from Sweden has created a fine-tuning platform to improve any LLM.
VindAI from Norway offers wind project software that minimises losses and improves energy production efficiency.
PlainComplex from Finland offers an AI-powered roster scheduling app for healthcare.
syntheticAIdata from Denmark offers high-quality synthetic data for training vision AI models.
Do you know cool tools or companies I should feature in the newsletter? Let me know!

💵Please “Steal” This Start-up Idea

We would love to see someone build the following (and if you do, we might invest in you):

Introducing "WebGenAI," an AI web developer. Users simply describe what they want their website to look like and provide URLs of sites they admire. From there, the AI crafts a tailored, visually appealing, and functional website, including metadata and code. Its ability to generate design aesthetics from descriptions and references creates a significant business moat. Over time, WebGenAI can add further AI features, such as real-time design optimisation based on user engagement data and integration of emerging web technologies.

🚀AI Funding News

Select Nordic AI companies that have raised funds in recent months:

1X from Norway
Human Touch Robotics from Norway
Biila from Finland
Magic Feedback from Denmark
Meltwater from Norway
Valkiv from Sweden
BeCause from Denmark
Skald AI from Sweden
Teton from Denmark
RiACT from Denmark

Congratulations to all of the founders and teams!

Pioneer AI top 3 deal highlights and insights:

1: 1X raised US$100 million in its Series B round. The company’s android robots showcase the vast potential of AI x Robotics. The Nordics, in particular Denmark, have a strong robotics scene, so we can likely expect more great things and funding announced in the near future.

2: BeCause raised €416 thousand. Its solutions target sustainability in the hospitality, travel, and tourism industries. Vertical sustainability focus addresses the needs and pain points of specific industries. Adding AI can supercharge that process. With a regional focus on sustainability, Nordic companies have a strong starting point in this area.

3: Teton.ai raised €4.8 million. Its healthcare solutions illustrate one of the major upsides of AI: taking some of the work burden off often overwhelmed healthcare staff.

Are there other Nordic companies that should be on this list? Let me know!

🎧 Listen To

AI Sweden Podcast - explores the transformative potential of AI in healthcare.
Prompt [DK] - on the possible reasons for Musk’s erratic behaviour and Chevrolet’s results with using ChatGPT.
Digitaliseringspådden [NO] - takes a look under the hood on Microsoft Copilot.

📅 Training, Meetups & Conferences

Conferences

February 1-2 (2024): Danish Digitalization, Data Science and AI: AI research and knowledge-sharing conference. [Nyborg, Denmark]
14 March (2024): Applied AI Nordics: Make AI practical and understandable and inspire how to get value from AI in business. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
14 March (2024): AI-Con 2024: AI in the context of content and marketing. [Oslo, Norway]
17-18 April (2024): AI+: Get the latest updates from the world of artificial intelligence. [Halden, Norway]
24-25 April (2024): Data Innovation Summit: One of the most influential Nordic events on data, analytics and AI. [Stockholm, Sweden]
25 April: Applied AI Nordics: Leading Nordic AI conference. This year’s subject is how to move from opportunistic to strategic AI. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
April 27-28: SAIM 2024: Conference for sharing knowledge and results in theory, methodology and applications of Artificial Intelligence, Soft Computing, and Machine Learning. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
July 18-19: ICAIAE 2024: Scientific conference for exchanging and sharing experiences and results of using AI for education. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
October 14-18: Process Mining Conference 2024: Industry and scientific conference on process mining. [Copenhagen, Denmark]
October 21-22: Nordic AI Meet: Symposium early-career AI researchers to network, collaborate, exchange ideas, and form a Nordic approach to building AI solutions for the societal good. [Helsinki, Finland]
October 21-23: D3A: The Danish Digitalization, Data Science and AI brings together a diverse audience to explore the latest trends and research in AI. [Nyborg, Denmark]