The opportunity

Substrate is building a network of fully autonomous wet labs, cloud-based data production facilities for AI biology, integrated with foundation models to become the critical infrastructure layer for AI-driven biological discovery. Our first node opens in King’s Cross, London, with several integrated workcells and two scientific verticals online by mid-2027. Our customers range from foundation model labs to global pharma.

Functional Genomics is the second scientific vertical we are bringing online, alongside protein science. The vertical covers cell line engineering, perturbation library design, screen execution, and bulk and single-cell sequencing readouts, with the resulting data feeding customer pipelines that include foundation model training for virtual cell models. Manual development of the day-1 screening workflow is starting now, and full autonomous execution on workcells is targeted for mid-to-late 2027.

You and the Functional Gen...