Outpost Bio

Outpost Bio is a London and Boston-based company making human microbiology computable. Founded in 2025, the company is building the most comprehensive functional dataset in human microbiology — modelling how microbial communities living in and on the human body interact with drugs, nutrients, and other chemical compounds. The human microbiome contains more genetic diversity than the human genome itself and can vary dramatically between individuals, making it a major driver of how people respond to medicines, absorb nutrients, and experience side effects. Yet most biological AI models are built around human DNA, ignoring this interaction layer entirely.

Outpost Bio's Lab-in-the-Loop platform combines high-throughput automated wet-lab experiments with machine learning in a closed feedback loop. AI models learn from experiments and guide what should be tested next, generating causal data rather than correlations. This enables the company to characterise how specific microbial communities respond to and metabolise specific compounds across a range of conditions, producing datasets that are directly useful to pharmaceutical, food, and consumer health companies.

For pharmaceutical partners, the platform can de-risk clinical development by flagging how drug candidates interact with representative microbiome compositions before trials begin. For formulation teams, it can identify how ingredients affect gut microbial communities. The company is led by Dr Jenny Yang as CEO and Alex Merwin as COO, alongside a founding team with expertise spanning microbiology, data engineering, and machine learning.

Outpost Bio raised £2.6 million in a pre-seed round in March 2026, co-led by Merantix Capital and Seedcamp, with participation from OpenSeed VC and Defined. The funding will accelerate development of the company's experimental platform and machine learning models.