Profluent Scores $35 Million

<p><strong>BERKELEY<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; Profluent&comma; an AI-first protein design company&comma; has closed additional funding to bring the total raised to &dollar;44 million&period; The &dollar;35 million financing was led by Spark Capital&comma;<i> <&sol;i>with participation from existing investors Insight Partners and Air Street Capital along with a syndicate of angel investors from OpenAI&comma; Salesforce&comma; Octant Bio&comma; and Google including Jeff Dean&comma; Chief Scientist of Google DeepMind&period; The company previously raised &dollar;9 million from Insight Partners&comma; Air Street Capital&comma; AIX Ventures&comma; and Convergent Ventures&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Our research at the forefront of AI has enabled Profluent to create large language models that begin to learn the blueprint of nature&comma;” said Ali Madani&comma; Profluent co-founder and Chief Executive Officer&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We are moving biology from being constrained by what can be discovered in nature to being able to design precisely according to our needs via AI&period; The science is real and the time is now to proactively create breakthrough medicines that can transform society&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Profluent was founded on the principle of AI as an interpreter to decode the language of life and transcend the limits of traditional protein engineering&period; Previous approaches required inefficient searches within nature or brute-force mutagenesis&comma; greatly hampering the resulting probability of success&period; In contrast&comma; Profluent’s models can rapidly access an immense combinatorial space to optimize across multiple functional attributes&comma; enabling a paradigm shift from accidental discovery to intentional design&period; By first applying its platform to gene editing&comma; the company showcases AI as the ideal interface for engineering complex biological systems&period; The versatility of the platform allows for AI to precisely tune existing CRISPR scaffolds or create novel editing systems from scratch&comma; with the ultimate goal of crafting the right tool for each patient&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;As they advance the frontier of AI research in the life sciences&comma; Ali and Profluent are making biology programmable for the first time&comma;” said Fraser Kelton&comma; General Partner at Spark Capital and former Head of Product at OpenAI&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;I joined OpenAI in 2020 when I realized the events of this past year were inevitable&period; We’re at the precipice of a similar change in biology&period; Just as ChatGPT can write compelling essays and emails&comma; Profluent has developed AI that designs entirely new and functional proteins&period; Having seen firsthand what happens when the frontier of AI is advanced in a field&comma; it was impossible to not be involved with Profluent and support their mission&period;&&num;8221&semi;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Kelton joined OpenAI in 2020 when it was a research lab and helped lead its commercialization efforts&period; He wrote the first product roadmaps for the organization and helped build and lead teams that launched OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E&period; Kelton has been an investor at Spark Capital since 2023&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&&num;8220&semi;Historically&comma; true disruption has occurred when two cutting-edge technologies intersect&period; Profluent is bridging AI and CRISPR&comma; leading to previously unseen innovation in the field&period; We view the transformation of natural enzymes like Cas9 into therapeutics as a significant leap forward&comma; and we intend to build on this progress by custom-designing enzymes for entirely new editing modalities&comma;&&num;8221&semi; said Hilary Eaton&comma; Chief Business Officer at Profluent&period; &&num;8220&semi;The foundation of our business model is partnerships – we’re actively evaluating potential collaborations with companies that are correspondingly best-in-class or innovative within each therapeutic vertical&comma; CRISPR and beyond&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>As part of the financing&comma; Kelton and Nabeel Hyatt&comma; also a general partner at Spark Capital&comma; will join the company’s Board of Directors&period; The capital will support Profluent&&num;8217&semi;s next stage of growth&comma; focusing on the advancement of its proprietary LLMs and datasets&comma; wet lab capabilities&comma; and upleveling of CRISPR gene editing&period; This investment will enable the creation and validation of innovative&comma; functional proteins and move the company closer to significantly improving healthcare and disease treatment&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Profluent was co-founded in 2022 by Madani&comma; who previously led machine learning research initiatives at Salesforce Research&comma; and Alexander Meeske&comma; assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine&period; Joining CEO Madani on Profluent’s seasoned executive team are Chief Business Officer Hilary Eaton&comma; who brings a decade of gene editing-focused business development experience at Tome&comma; Vor and Editas&semi; and VP and Head of Gene Editing Peter Cameron&comma; who previously directed technology development at Spotlight and Caribou&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;