Paris-based BioTech and AI company Rivercell has officially launched out of stealth with €22 million ($25 million) in Seed funding. The company is building technology that can predict how human cells respond to different treatments.
Rivercell is developing a proprietary cell-response data platform and an AI-powered world model. Its technology is designed to help researchers understand how human cells react to treatments, which could support the development of new medicines and therapies.
The funding round was led by HV, with participation from HCVC, Alven, and Bpifrance Digital Venture. The investment gives Rivercell the capital it needs to move its technology from development toward wider commercial use.
Rivercell will use the new funding to scale its proprietary data-generation platform and expand its wet lab in Paris, where scientists work with chemicals and biological samples. The company also plans to launch its AI Virtual Cell programme, aimed at using AI to model and predict how human cells behave under different treatments.
“A world model of the cell is the opportunity of the century in medicine. The missing piece is data: how cells change over time and under treatment, seen through multiple lenses and at multiple layers, captured at scale. Building that data engine in Europe is strategic, not only for Rivercell but for the continent’s place in AI and biology,” says Yann Fleureau, co-founder and CEO of Rivercell.
“AI is already rewriting how we understand the chemistry of life, from protein structure to molecular design. The next frontier is predicting how cells behave, and that requires a full-stack approach that combines a novel platform, automated wet labs, and world models. Yann and Eric bring exactly this combination of expertise, and with its footing in both Paris’s AI ecosystem and Basel’s pharma cluster, Rivercell is uniquely positioned to lead it,” adds Maxi Pethö-Schramm, Principal at HV.
“AI virtual cells will transform how we understand and engineer biology. Rivercell’s ambition to unite large-scale perturbation experiments with AI simulation is why I’m excited to join its Scientific Advisory Board,” says Dr. Charlotte Bunne, Assistant Professor, Artificial Intelligence in Molecular Medicine at EPFL.
Founded in 2026, Rivercell is developing a data platform and AI model that can predict how living human cells react to medicines and genetic changes.
The company has created its own technology platform to generate large amounts of high-quality cell data. The platform tracks how cells change over time and collects different types of information from individual cells.
This data is used to train Rivercell’s own AI world model of the cell, called the AI Virtual Cell (AIVC). The model is designed to predict how cells may respond to a specific drug or genetic change.
Rivercell aims to use its AI model to run more research in silico, or through computer-based simulations. This could help researchers reduce the number of physical wet-lab experiments needed when studying new treatments and biological processes.
