Cradle, a biotech firm based in the Netherlands, has raised an incredible $33 million in total capital after securing an impressive $24 million in Series A funding. The innovative methodology of the organization entails utilizing generative AI to enable scientists in the protein design and engineering process. They have created easily navigable web-based software that any team of scientists and experimenters can utilize without the assistance of machine learning engineers or bioinformaticians.
With the help of this cutting-edge software, biotechnology companies will be able to quickly accelerate their research and development processes by removing the typical data obstacles that prevent them from efficiently using Generative AI and ML techniques.
Having been painstakingly trained on billions of protein sequences, including data produced in their own wet laboratory, Cradle’s own generative AI models are unique. After coming out of stealth mode in 2022, the business has quickly gained the backing of nine major industry players, including big names in the field like Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Novozymes, and Twist Bioscience.
Over a dozen research and development projects are now being worked on by Cradle, which is focused on the engineering of several protein modalities, including peptides, antibodies, enzymes, and vaccines. A broad range of desirable protein qualities, including as stability, expression, activity, binding affinity, and specificity, are the focus of their research. With this $24 million in Series A funding, Cradle will be able to continue advancing its groundbreaking work in the field of generative artificial intelligence for proteins.
Cradle has demonstrated through spectacular results that their system can greatly speed up protein design and optimization, leading to successful outcomes with fewer experiments. Projects running on Cradle’s platform advance twice as quickly as industry standards, increasing the chances of success for particular R&D initiatives. Through the use of generative AI, Cradle’s technology may solve protein engineering problems that are now unsolvable for humans using current methods.
The lead investor in the most recent round of fundraising is Index Ventures, with Kindred Capital participating as well. Prominent angel investors who have contributed to the round include Tom Glocer, a former CEO of Thomson Reuters and Lead Director at Merck, and Chris Gibson, co-founder and CEO of Recursion.
The money will be used to support Cradle’s machine learning and biotech team, expand its product development and sales skills, and accelerate the company’s growth.
The CEO and co-founder of Cradle, Stef van Grieken, highlighted the potential benefits of their technology, saying that “one of the biggest tools we can deploy to improve health outcomes and reduce the environmental impact of human consumption” is biological products. He emphasized the ways in which generative AI and machine learning quicken the process of designing proteins, allowing R&D teams to innovate more quickly and effectively, which in turn leads to the successful development of new products.
In the last year, Cradle has worked hard to show off the useful results of its technology and has started collaborating with top companies in the field. Van Grieken conveyed enthusiasm regarding the Series A funding, as it offers the essential means to sustain this pace, expedite expansion, and broaden its clientele.
Index Ventures partner Sofia Dolfe discussed the revolutionary potential of AI in biology, pointing out that Cradle’s technology is already driving innovation in an area that has the ability to completely change how different goods are made. She praised how scientists use Cradle to design novel proteins, contributing to the developing discipline of programming biology, and she emphasized the platform’s quick expansion to meet growing client demand.
