The Nancy-based start-up Nebula, supported by the Incubateur Lorrain (Lorrain Innovation Incubator), has been selected among the 28 new winners of the “AI Pioneers” call for projects, a national programme designed to support R&D initiatives with a strong and sustainable impact on the economy while contributing to national technological sovereignty through artificial intelligence innovation.
Founded on innovations developed within the Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie Théoriques (LPCT – Université de Lorraine/CNRS) in Nancy, NEBULA combines computational biology and artificial intelligence to accelerate drug discovery. Its AI technology uncovers the full range of conformations that a therapeutic target can adopt, helping to speed up the development of innovative treatments. As part of this call for projects, Nebula, in partnership with the Laboratoire de Génie Informatique, de Production et de Maintenance (LGIPM), is developing a breakthrough technology based on AI–hardware co-design to address the key industrialisation challenges associated with scaling its innovation.
Launched as part of France’s National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, the “AI Pioneers” programme, funded through France 2030 and managed by Bpifrance, aims to foster breakthrough technologies in strategic sectors such as healthcare, industry, energy and the ecological transition.
This distinction marks a new milestone in the development of the young company, which won the i-Lab competition in 2025 and aims to significantly improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the early stages of drug discovery through sovereign AI technologies.
The original version of this text was published in French on the Factuel website.
Read the original article
