Funding profile · RNA foundation models, precision oncology

Blank Bio

A $7.2 million seed round, announced in May 2026, sits alongside a much smaller SEC filing from six months earlier: an Alumni Ventures vehicle that put $135,000 into the company. No Form D has been filed under Blank Bio’s own name.

$7.2MTotal seed financing, company reported (May 2026)
$135KRaised by an Alumni Ventures SPV from 8 investors (Nov 2025)
$16.9KAverage check in that SPV
6Named funds in the seed round announcement, no lead disclosed

Data as of September 25, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Summer 2025 Y Combinator, Summer 2025 batch Not disclosed Y Combinator YC data
Nov 2025 SPV: AVSF, Blank Bio 2025, LLC $135,000 8 investors, administered by Alumni Ventures Form D
May 2026 Seed, oversubscribed $7.2M announced, no Form D found under the company’s own name Define Ventures, Leonis Capital, Nova Threshold, Ripple Ventures, SignalFire, Y Combinator, and others Company release

What the filings show

AVSF, Blank Bio 2025, LLC · Form D · filed Nov 21, 2025

First sale
Nov 6, 2025
Type
Pooled investment fund (single-company SPV)
Offered
$135,000
Sold
$135,000 of $135,000
Investors
8 · average about $16,875
Exemptions
Rule 506(b); Investment Company Act Section 3(c)(1)
Related persons
Michael Collins, CEO of Alumni Ventures LLC, the issuer’s sole manager
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0002095748

Reading the filings

  1. The SPV predates the press release.The Alumni Ventures vehicle’s first sale was Nov 6, 2025, about six months before Blank Bio’s May 19, 2026 announcement of a $7.2 million seed close. That gap is consistent with an angel syndicate closing early, ahead of a later institutional close and a public release.
  2. The checks in the SPV are small.Eight investors put in $135,000 total, about $16,875 each. That is the size of an individual backer syndicate, not an institutional fund check.
  3. No Form D appears under Blank Bio’s own name.As of Sep 25, 2026, SEC EDGAR shows no direct filing by Blank Bio, Inc. for the $7.2 million round the company announced, only the smaller SPV formed around it. Companies raising under Section 4(a)(2) rather than Regulation D file no Form D at all, and a filing can also lag an announcement, so the gap does not by itself mean the round did not close.
  4. Named funds and the SPV do not overlap.Define Ventures, Leonis Capital, Nova Threshold, Ripple Ventures and SignalFire are named in the funding release. None of them appear on the Alumni Ventures Form D, which lists only the vehicle’s administrator. The two capital sources read as separate pools of money.
  5. No lead investor was named.The company called the round oversubscribed and listed six backers “and others,” without identifying which, if any, led the round.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Regulatory No FDA submissions found. Blank Bio is not selling a cleared device or diagnostic. Not found
Strategic partner Pacific Biosciences (Nasdaq: PACB) collaboration to sequence up to 100 fresh frozen tumor samples, announced with the seed round on May 19, 2026. Company and partner stated
Customers Company says its open source model is used by Sanofi and GSK. No confirmation from either company found. Not confirmed
Academic record Orthrus RNA foundation model, co-authored by founders Philip Fradkin and Ruian Shi, posted to bioRxiv Oct 2024 and published in Nature Methods. Public record
Headcount About 6 to 7 employees as of mid 2026, per Y Combinator and Tracxn. Independent

What to watch

  • A Form D filed under Blank Bio’s own name, which would confirm the size and terms of the seed round.
  • Whether the named funds, Define Ventures, Leonis Capital, Nova Threshold, Ripple Ventures and SignalFire, appear in a future filing.
  • Named pharma or diagnostic customers, beyond the unconfirmed reference to Sanofi and GSK.
  • Any follow-on round after the PacBio sequencing work is complete.

The Blank Bio story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Medicare Vox: Shared investor: Define Ventures. A San Francisco Medicare brokerage that spent five years selling insurance to seniors, then turned the call center itself into an AI product
  • Arintra: Shared investor: Define Ventures. Software that reads a finished patient chart and pushes billing codes straight into the claim, with no coder in between
  • Kernal Biologics: Also in Therapeutics. A Boston company designing messenger RNA that switches on only inside the cells it is aimed at, now building an in vivo CAR T therapy on that idea
  • Sensible Biotechnologies: Also in Therapeutics. A platform that grows therapeutic mRNA inside engineered cells instead of making it in a tube

Sources

  1. Public recordForm D, AVSF, Blank Bio 2025, LLCSEC · filed Nov 21, 2025
  2. Public recordOrthrus: Towards Evolutionary and Functional RNA Foundation ModelsbioRxiv and PubMed, PMID 39416135
  3. IndependentBlank Bio, 2026 Company Profile & TeamTracxn · Mar 17, 2026
  4. IndependentBlank Bio: $7.2 Million Seed Financing Raised To Advance RNA Foundation Models For Precision OncologyPulse 2.0, Amit Chowdhry · May 19, 2026
  5. IndependentBlank Bio Raises $7.2M in Seed FundingFinSMEs · May 20, 2026
  6. IndependentBlank Bio Announces Seed Financing and Strategic Collaboration with PacBio to Advance RNA Foundation Models for Precision OncologyBioSpace, Nick Paul Taylor · May 19, 2026
  7. CompanyBlank Bio Announces Seed Financing and Strategic Collaboration with PacBio to Advance RNA Foundation Models for Precision OncologyBusiness Wire · May 19, 2026
  8. CompanyBlank Bio company page and founder launch postY Combinator · accessed Sep 25, 2026

Compiled from SEC and other public records and published reports as of September 25, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Blank Bio. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.