‍System, a Public Benefit Corporation developing a systems-based approach to organize the world's data and knowledge, announced today it has been awarded a $6.5M investment from Wellcome. 

“Wellcome’s funding ensures that our focus and mission as a Public Benefit Corporation is durable and sustainable”, said Adam Bly, Founder and CEO of System. “This program-related investment will be instrumental in driving systems-based research, policy, and solutions across the world.” 

From Silos to Systems: Helping Anyone See and Solve Anything as a System

The biggest challenges faced by humanity — from COVID to climate change — are systemic, yet data and knowledge are organized into silos, such as discipline (e.g. health and environment) or scale (e.g. molecular and epidemiological). This limits the abilities of leaders, researchers, and citizens to reliably predict outcomes, make decisions, mitigate risks — and improve the state of the world.

To address this challenge, System is developing the System Graph, a platform that leverages state-of-the-art LLMs, advanced graph technology, complexity science, and causal inference techniques to produce a model of the world as one unified whole, built from millions of rich, quantitative relationships that cut across sources and fields.

"There are vast collections of evidence that we use to tackle global health challenges such as mental health, infectious diseases, and the effects of climate on our health”, said Isabel Fletcher, Technology Manager at Wellcome. “However, this data is often fragmented, hindering important research. Wellcome’s support for System will help connect and co-ordinate this knowledge and inform health policy at scale, ultimately improving lives around the world.” 

$6.5M to Advance Systems-Based Thinking, Research, and Policy

Wellcome’s funding will support System’s mission in three meaningful ways. 

• It will first help the team provide free and open access to the System Graph for non-commercial use. This will ensure that researchers, scholars, policymakers, and journalists have access to data informing their thinking and decision-making.

• System will develop open-source tools to generate living, evidence-based systems maps for any topic in the System Graph, and make data available to download for research, analysis, and visualization. There will be a strong initial focus on public health and biomedical research.  

• Lastly, System will use the funds to host an annual conference on systems-based solutions to the world’s greatest challenges.

Reimagining Public Interest Partnerships for AI

System’s status as a Public Benefit Corporation is reinforced by this agreement. System has pledged to maintain its PBC status for the next five years. In addition, the company may not amend its charter in a way that materially alters its public benefit mission, without Wellcome’s approval.

System is committed to open data and open science. It guarantees free and open access to data, promotes the scientific method, and supports education and outreach initiatives to encourage systems literacy in society. The organization will start releasing snapshots of the System Graph into the commons in 2026. 

About Wellcome  

Wellcome supports science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. We support discovery research into life, health and wellbeing, and we’re taking on three worldwide health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate and health. 

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