Radical Numerics presented Omnii Defense, an AI model that runs locally and detects natural, synthetic, or AI-engineered pathogens. The required hardware fits in a backpack: a laptop and a USB gene sequencer, with no internet connection, allowing use in areas with unreliable internet connectivity. According to the company’s tests, the model achieved a 95.8% recall rate, compared with 78.6% for the DIAMOND bioinformatics tool. It can also identify mutant viruses and novel strains absent from its training data, as well as unreferenced metagenomic reads. Founded by Eric Nguyen and Michael Poli, the Menlo Park company raised $50 million in seed funding in June 2026 and works with national laboratories, including Lawrence Livermore.
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