Basecamp Research has announced the launch of the “Trillion Gene Atlas,” a groundbreaking initiative aimed at generating and modeling biological data at an unprecedented scale. This project, which is a collaboration with companies like Anthropic, Ultima Genomics, and PacBio, seeks to collect genomic data from over 100 million species across thousands of locations worldwide, significantly enhancing our understanding of genetic diversity by a factor of 100.
Having raised $85 million in venture capital, Basecamp is drawing comparisons between this initiative and the Human Genome Project, which took 13 years and cost approximately $3 billion. The company’s efforts are also part of a broader strategy that includes their recently introduced Eden models, designed to identify complex patterns in genetic data that could lead to accelerated drug development.
Basecamp’s ambitious goals stem from a 2019 expedition to the Arctic, where co-founders Glen Gowers and Oliver Vince discovered numerous previously unrecorded biological samples. Their vision of creating an “internet of biology” for AI training models reflects a commitment to exploring the intricate web of life over the span of 4.4 billion years.