RNA's Toughest Challenge Just Got $18 Million and a New AI Platform

Jan de Vries · 2026-10-13

Getting RNA drugs to the right cells has been a scientific headache for years. A Cambridge spin-out just raised serious cash to crack it. Undecimal Bio, a spin-out from Eleven Therapeutics, announced a $18 million (€16 million) Seed round this week. The goal? Expand DELiveri, their AI-powered platform that identifies conjugates capable of directing RNA medicines to specific cell types. ### Why This Matters The round was co-led by 4BIO Capital and IQ Capital, with participation from Verve Ventures, Harel Tech, Entree Capital, Kerna Ventures, and Saras Capital. The funding will also push forward Undecimal's renovascular programs and grow the team at their labs based at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. "The hard problem in RNAi was never the silencing, it was getting the molecule to the right cell," said Dr. Yaniv Erlich, CEO and co-founder. "Our in-vivo validated DELiveri platform can screen large chemical spaces at an unprecedented pace, generating massive data for our legions of AI agents to decipher the structure-activity relationship and score the best candidates." ### The Bigger Picture This Seed round is part of a wave of European investments in RNA-based therapeutics, targeted drug delivery, and AI-enabled biotech platforms in 2026. Here's a quick look at some related deals: - **Aerska** (Dublin) raised $36 million Series A for RNA interference medicines targeting neurological diseases. - **WhiteLab Genomics** (Paris) secured $26 million Series B for AI-driven genomic medicine design and delivery. - **STORM Therapeutics** (Cambridge) closed a $53 million Series C to advance RNA-modifying cancer treatments. - **Thalia Therapeutics** (UK) raised $3.5 million for its RNA therapeutics portfolio. - **Helical** (London) brought in $9.5 million for its AI-powered pharmaceutical R&D platform. Add in other investments like Spain's Gate2Brain, Belgium's Sightera Biosciences, and the UK's Houdini Bio, and you're looking at roughly $142 million in 2026 funding for this space—including Undecimal's round. ### How DELiveri Works Founded in 2026, Undecimal pairs massive-scale combinatorial chemistry with transformer-based AI to guide siRNA therapeutics into the tissues that need them. RNA interference has already transformed how we treat liver-expressed diseases. But reaching tissues beyond the liver? That's been a major roadblock. DELiveri tackles this by screening huge combinatorial libraries of candidate ligands. The cells themselves act as molecular radars, detecting productive delivery at single-molecule resolution. That high-throughput data gets analyzed by agentic AI, which decodes the structure-activity relationship and identifies conjugates that can carry siRNA into target cells. Undecimal is starting with renovascular diseases, where there's a big unmet need. Current treatments mostly address symptoms, not the underlying causes. The company believes targeted siRNA delivery could bring the precision of genetic medicines to these conditions, enabling durable, target-specific silencing of disease-driving pathways. ### What's Next The Board of Directors includes reps from 4BIO Capital, IQ Capital, and Harel Technologies, plus co-founders Dr. Yaniv Erlich and Shaul Ilan. Verve Ventures joins as an observer. With this fresh funding, Undecimal is poised to push the boundaries of what RNA medicines can do. If they succeed, it could open up a whole new world of treatments for diseases that have been out of reach. So keep an eye on this space. The next big breakthrough in RNA therapeutics might just come from a lab in Cambridge.