Cradle Bio Raises $73M Series B to Advance AI Protein Engineering Software
Cradle Bio (Amsterdam, Netherlands), an AI-driven protein engineering company, has secured $73 million in Series B funding, led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) (CA, U.S.), with ongoing support from Index Ventures (CA, U.S.) and Kindred Capital (London, UK).
This latest investment brings the company’s total funding to over $100 million, fuelling its mission to simplify AI-powered protein engineering and make it accessible to researchers worldwide.
Revolutionizing Protein Engineering with AI
Cradle Bio is an AI-driven company specializing in protein engineering. Its platform combines advanced machine learning models with experimental data to design and optimize proteins with specific properties and functions.
Unlike traditional protein engineering, which relies on trial and error and has a low success rate, Cradle Bio uses a generative AI model to ‘reverse engineer’ proteins. The platform applies machine learning algorithms trained on real data, allowing users to specify desired protein structures and receive a list of possible sequences.
This approach makes protein design more efficient and accessible, even to those without machine learning expertise. It contrasts with methods like Rosetta or AlphaFold, which predict protein folding based on sequences but require extensive computational resources and knowledge.
With new research data emerging daily, Cradle Bio’s technology ensures its AI models continuously adapt by integrating these fresh datasets. This dynamic learning process helps overcome the limitations of traditional protein engineering methods, which are often slow, costly, and prone to error.
“It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. Scientists often spend years running experiments, using millions of dollars in resources, without the guarantee of success. We started Cradle because we believed AI could play a meaningful role in solving this challenge, and we’re excited to see this vision becoming a reality,”
Stef van Grieken, CEO and Co-Founder of Cradle.
Wild Applications Across Industries
The biotech firm aims to drive breakthroughs in a variety of industries, including therapeutics, sustainable materials, animal-free foods, and eco-friendly chemicals and pesticides. By leveraging AI-powered protein engineering, Cradle Bio’s technology can enable the development of new therapeutics for treating diseases, offering potential treatments for conditions that were previously difficult to target.
Moreover, its application across other industries offers more sustainable, low-impact solutions for agriculture and manufacturing. By promoting these innovations, Cradle Bio aims to not only advance human health but also contribute to the well-being of the planet.
Scaling up for the Future
The company plans to use the funds to expand its wet lab for further research into additional protein modalities, grow its engineering team to tackle more complex protein challenges and scale its go-to-market strategy to broaden its platform’s reach to more scientific teams globally.
Cradle Bio reports that its technology can accelerate research and development projects by up to 12 times and reduce costs by as much as 90%. Since launching its platform earlier this year, the company has attracted over 21 customers, including academic researchers, laboratory scientists, and industry leaders in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, who are using the technology to develop 31 proteins, such as peptides, vaccines, and enzymes.
These customers are leveraging Cradle Bio’s platform to streamline their protein engineering efforts, accelerating discoveries in therapeutics, sustainable materials, and other high-impact applications.
User satisfaction is high, with scientists consistently rating the platform 8 out of 10 or higher. Leading industry players, including Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Novonesis, and Grifols, are among its users, highlighting promising adoption and performance.
“Biology is one of the domains where generative AI can have the biggest positive impact and Cradle is leading the way with its pioneering approach to protein design as a digital service,”
Alex Lim, General Partner at IVP, and new investor in Cradle.
“Given the costs associated with drug discovery or similar fields of research, any efficiencies at the R&D stage will translate to both major financial returns for customers and significant real-world benefits for humanity. With impressive results delivered by Cradle’s platform just two years after launch, we see a bright future ahead for one of Europe’s – and the world’s – most consequential AI companies,” Lim added.