Astromech raises $20M to build a biological operating system that can forecast evolutionary change

Astromech has pulled in $20 million more and pushed its valuation to $3.8 billion. The round was led by biotechnology investor Bob Nelsen, with backing from Peak 6, NeoGenesis Capital, Builders VC and CAZ Investments. Total funding now stands at $60 million.

The company’s pitch is unusual even by biotech standards. Co-founded by Ben Lamm and geneticist George Church, Astromech is trying to build what it calls a predictive model of biology: a system that mixes genomic, evolutionary, biological and functional data to guess how living systems will change, where they may break, and what is driving the shift.

That’s a different bet from the usual way biotech works. Rather than studying organisms and diseases as they are right now, Astromech wants to forecast future biological trajectories. The company says that could help spot genetic bottlenecks, disease progression, drug resistance and the way species react to environmental change. Lamm compared the approach to weather forecasting, where historical patterns and current conditions are combined to predict what comes next.

Astromech was spun out of Colossal Biosciences, the gene-engineering company trying to bring back animals including the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger, dire wolf, dodo, moa and bluebuck. It says it draws on 3.8 billion years of evolutionary history as a training signal, and its model uses data from living and extinct organisms plus evolutionary ancestry and biological responses. Two model engines do the work: one uses deep learning to find patterns across species, while the other reverse-engineers biological systems through history before projecting them forward.

Church says the company’s edge is its focus on ancestral regulatory states, not just proteins. That matters because, in his view, a genome-by-itself comparison can miss how DNA differences affect function. Astromech is applying the idea first to longevity, where it has mapped 46 longevity-associated genes across a time-calibrated tree of life. The near-term plan is to hire more researchers, expand its comparative genomic infrastructure, study more species and then launch pilot projects with health and biosecurity partners.