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November 27, 2024
The Dutch-Swiss company Cradle, specializing in AI-powered protein engineering, has raised $73 million in its Series B funding round. The round was led by investment firm IVP, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures and Kindred Capital. This brings the total investment in Cradle to over $100 million.
Cradle is developing a platform that combines generative AI models with experimental data. The goal is to accelerate protein development and make the creation of new proteins with desired properties more efficient and cost-effective. Traditional methods of protein development are time-consuming and expensive. By using AI, scientists can identify and test promising protein sequences more quickly. The platform continuously learns from experimental results, thereby improving the accuracy of its predictions.
Cradle reports significant time savings in research and development projects, ranging between 1.2 and 12 times, as well as cost reductions of up to 90%. The company states that scientists rate the platform with a satisfaction score of over 8 points. Since the commercialization of the software platform at the beginning of the year, the customer base has grown to over 21 customers who are currently developing 31 proteins. Customers include renowned companies such as Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Novonesis, and Grifols.
With the new funding, Cradle plans to expand its activities in three key areas. First, it will expand its own wet lab to intensify research on additional protein modalities and properties and improve its AI models. Second, it will expand its engineering team to address more complex challenges in protein engineering. Third, it will scale sales and operations to make the platform accessible to more scientific teams.
The appointment of Sam Partovi as Chief Commercial Officer underscores the expansion plans. Partovi brings extensive experience in scaling life science platforms.
Alex Lim, General Partner at IVP, sees Cradle as a company with great potential: "Biology is one of the areas where generative AI can have the greatest positive impact, and Cradle is leading the way with its pioneering approach to protein design as a digital service. Given the costs associated with drug development or similar areas of research, any efficiency gains in the R&D phase will result in both substantial financial returns for clients and significant real-world benefits for humanity." Cradle aims to make its software available to one million scientists in the long term, thereby driving innovation in protein development.
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