Code Ocean raises $16.5 Million for its Platform for scientific collaboration

Code Ocean, the creator of the first-of-its-kind computational-research laboratory SaaS platform for scientific collaboration and discovery, has raised $16.5 million in a Series B round led by Battery Ventures and M12, Microsoft’s Venture Fund.

Code Ocean is at the forefront of enabling computational scientists from all fields to concentrate on science in a digital laboratory. The Code Ocean digital lab provides a uniform and safe environment for automating cloud-based research and ensuring fully repeatable analysis across all scientific fields.

“Billions of dollars have been invested by the venture community over the past decade to make the development side of R&D more efficient, leaving researchers, or the ‘R’ side of R&D, starving for a compute platform and tools to make their jobs equally efficient,” said Scott Tobin, a general partner at Battery Ventures who is also a board director of the company. “Code Ocean’s software-as-a-service platform is now the one place where research comes together in a trusted, virtual laboratory space.” 

The core technology of Code Ocean’s digital laboratory is the Compute Capsule, a new container technology for science that encapsulates a reproducible, archival, and executable version of an experiment that combines the essential triplet of any computational research: code, data, and computing environment.

The Compute Capsule is based on the Open Science principle, allowing for simple movement of code and data between platforms. By automating Docker, git repositories, Nextflow, and other open-source technologies, the digital lab provides a user-friendly, automated lab environment that enables researchers to duplicate, reuse, and share computational experiments. The unique capacity of the Capsule allows for the complete functionality of a computational experiment to be saved and reused in future research years.

The cloud-based architecture of Code Ocean enables IT to control and monitor access to all computer resources and storage. Capsules, datasets, and findings are kept as scientific assets in a secure, searchable repository. The Code Ocean platform supports cloud workstations for RStudio, Jupyter, Terminal, MATLAB, and Shiny.

Simon Adar, co-founder, and CEO of Code Ocean, stated that a consistent, automated virtual laboratory is essential for the digital era of research. “Computing has considerably boosted our speed while also increasing our complexity dramatically.”
“To progress research quicker, scientists must access high-performance computers,” Adar continues. “They need to streamline to promote safe, seamless cooperation and expedite the commercialization of findings. Our technology eliminates the complexity barrier by offering a digital lab that enables the scientist to concentrate on research. In the coming decades, we will give better healthcare results due to increased scientific output, healthcare advancements, and the rapid development of tailored treatment. Code Ocean is THE center of scientific information that can be shared across disciplines.”

The Code Ocean platform has a proven track record of success among researchers and top biopharmaceutical companies. Code Ocean’s platform is highly advantageous for disciplines such as biology, biopharma, chemistry, genomics, and developing areas of computational science, such as AI-driven drug R&D.

Adopted by leading biopharma firms, including Sema4, Lantern, Champions Oncology, CytoReason, Dragonfly Therapeutics, and others, Code Ocean’s digital lab idea is already reducing the cost of computational research and allowing computational scientists to focus on science. A unique access program for early-stage venture capitalists, such as AION Labs, enables Code Ocean to fund the development of breakthrough technologies in startup companies.

Code Ocean Enterprise is a secure virtual lab environment that is installed with automatic access to the customer’s private cloud, containing sophisticated capabilities for data storage, analytical pipelines, and API connections to extend the platform. Customers of Code Ocean have deployed the laboratory for both secure deployments with patient data protection and laboratory deployments for development and computational experimentation.

The platform of Code Ocean is also available as a free public platform for any scientific developer or author publishing through Nature, IEEE, Elsevier, and others. Code Ocean is the new baseline for Open Science, with moreover 2,500 public research Capsules including open-source code and instantly available for cloud execution.

Code Ocean is presently hiring for all engineering, scientific, marketing, and sales jobs.