Grid Core Bio raises seed for semiconductor plus AI proteomics

Grid Core is a good example of the “AI + domain hardware” startups emerging in China: here, the domain is ultrasensitive proteomics, and the hardware stack is a semiconductor imaging platform married to AI‑driven computational optics. The company claims its ISAS system and microfluidic droplet plus on‑chip imaging approach can hit femtogram‑level protein detection, with AI models handling denoising, quality control and anomaly detection.([eu.36kr.com](https://eu.36kr.com/en/p/3610806344532993)) That’s not AGI, but it is the sort of narrow, extremely data‑rich problem where advanced models and specialized silicon co‑evolve.

Strategically, this showcases how capital is flowing into vertical AI infrastructure for drug discovery and diagnostics, not just into general‑purpose LLMs. For the AGI race, these firms matter because they generate unique biological datasets, refine techniques for combining physical sensors with generative models, and push compute requirements deeper into scientific workloads. As they scale, they’ll also become major buyers of both cloud and on‑prem accelerators, nudging chip vendors to optimize for bio workloads.

For global competitors like Recursion, Insitro or Tempus, Grid Core is another signal that China intends to be competitive in AI‑first biopharma tooling, knitting together local government funds, semiconductor know‑how and life‑science talent.