Vizgen Launches New Business Unit for AI Model Spatial Data Production
Nov 10, 2026 | Huanjia Zhang
NEW YORK – Vizgen on Tuesday launched a new business unit that aims to capture more opportunities in artificial intelligence-powered spatial biology research for drug discovery and development.
Dubbed Velocity Lab, the unit is tasked with generating large-scale spatial data for AI model development and training for both external customers and for Vizgen itself, potentially opening another revenue stream for the company.
“There is widespread recognition that new kinds of data, not just sheer volumes of it, will be required to train ever more useful models of biology,” said Vizgen president and CEO Rob Carson. “Spatial biology, not surprisingly, is one such kind of data.”
To generate spatial data for training AI models, Velocity Lab will work with each customer to understand the biological question they want to address and help design the experiment, Carson said. The unit will absorb Vizgen’s existing fee-for-service business, which has been generating data for customers using the company’s spatial technologies or for potential customers who are considering purchasing Vizgen’s Merscope platform.
Velocity Lab will offer spatial data service for external customers such as pharma companies, academic institutions, and research consortia who are aiming to build large-scale atlases for developing their own AI models, Carson said.
For that, Vizgen currently offers two workflows: the Volumetric Tissue Mapping assay that can profile samples in 3D to determine cell neighborhoods, tissue architecture, and disease microenvironments, as well as the Merscope CoMap assay that can co-detect protein and RNA targets within the same tissue sample.
The company can produce large volumes of spatial data across tissues, species, donors, and conditions in a consistent manner, Carson said, generating reproducible datasets across runs, batches, and technicians that makes them suitable for AI training.
Besides catering to external customers, Vizgen will also leverage Velocity Lab to achieve its own AI ambitions. Carson declined to disclose more details of Vizgen’s AI model roadmap at this time but said the company plans to accumulate spatial data assets to develop “proprietary predictive biology solutions” for AI drug research and discovery, either independently or in collaboration with partners.
In a statement, Vizgen said initial research collaborations are already underway, including “a large multi-national biopharma partner” that is using Volumetric Tissue Mapping for neuroscience drug discovery. Carson declined to disclose the name of the company.
Additionally, the Allen Institute is tapping Velocity Lab to produce high-plex multiomics data using the Merscope CoMap assay. “Measuring protein and RNA together on the same section lets us connect a cell’s molecular identity to its functional state, a critical layer as we build reference atlases of human tissue,” Jennie Close, a researcher at the Allen Institute, said in a statement. “Generating this data through Velocity Lab gave us the quality and consistency we need, at a scale that keeps our atlasing work moving.”
Carson said that pricing for Velocity Lab is project-specific. Key factors include the number of genes profiled, panel design, sample numbers, and whether additional capabilities such as protein detection are required.
The collaboration model will also influence pricing, Carson said. Customers may employ Velocity Lab to generate exclusive datasets, which they completely control or own, or sign a collaborative data generation agreement where datasets can contribute to Vizgen’s broader AI model development effort.
In 2027, Vizgen plans to expand Velocity Lab’s offerings to enable spatially-resolved functional genomics experiments as well as whole-transcriptome spatial analysis, Carson said. By then, the company also aims to scale the capacity profiling of the business unit to hundreds of millions of cells per week.
Vizgen’s aunch of Velocity Lab comes at a time when other life sciences instrument and reagent makers are increasingly recognizing the value of data in the age of AI. Vizgen’s competitor 10x Genomics, for instance, has been inking partnerships with research consortia, pharma companies, and biomedical institutions to generate spatial and single-cell data atlases for AI training. The same goes for Illumina, which has dedicated a new business unit, BioInsight, to help achieve its AI and data ambitions while continuing to boost its single-cell and spatial product offerings.
Velocity Lab is currently available to early-access partners, and Carson said he is “encouraged by the interest” the company has already received from potential pharma and research partners. As the new business unit matures, it is expected to contribute “significantly” to revenue, he added.