The AI biotech company Cradle has raised $73 million in a Series B funding round led by IVP and supported by Index Ventures and Kindred Capital, bringing its total funding to over $100 million.
Cradle, based in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Zurich (Switzerland), was founded in 2021 by ex-Google employees Stef van Grieken (CEO) and Daniel Danciu (CTO) founded to make biology engineering more accessible and efficient using AI. The team consists of machine learning and biotech research specialists from leading companies such as Zymergen, Novartis, Uber, Meta, DeepMind and Perfect Day.
AI-powered protein engineering platform
The fresh funding is intended to help Cradle scale its operations to accelerate the launch of its core product – an AI-powered protein engineering platform – designed to make animal-free foods, life-changing therapeutics, and sustainable pesticides and oil-free chemicals “easier.” “To discover and develop “faster and cheaper”.
Additionally, the round will expand Cradle’s wet lab (it sells software but is still a biotech company) and engineering teams to address more complex protein design challenges.
“Over the last two years, our own research and collaboration with partners have proven that this technology can deliver remarkable results in a range of applications, from the development of new vaccines and sustainable chemicals to novel diagnostics and agricultural crop protection. Our goal now is to put Cradle’s software into the hands of a million scientists and empower them to create great products.”
© Cradle
Protein design as a digital service
Cradle says it is experiencing rapid growth and has expanded its customer base through partnerships with companies such as Novo Nordisk, Ginkgo Bioworks, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Novonesis and Grifols for research and development in various sectors, including therapeutics, diagnostics, food, chemicals and Agriculture, expanded.
The company explains that the key to its success lies in the unique approach of its AI platform, which allows it to dramatically reduce the number of experiments required, making research cheaper and faster.
The results show that the platform can accelerate discovery and development by 12 times compared to traditional methods. “It can take years and many millions of dollars to conduct a successful research and development process, and many projects are never successfully completed because they fail to achieve their goals,” the biotech company said.
© Cradle
Cradle’s AI platform can also create models tailored to the customer’s goals and can be extended to pharmaceutical and industrial applications, including Enzymeantibodies, peptides, vaccines and therapeutic proteins. Additionally, the company’s SaaS model protects intellectual property and ensures data security.
Alex Lim, General Partner at IVP, comments: “Biology is one of the areas where generative AI can have the greatest positive impact, and Cradle is leading the way with its groundbreaking approach to protein design as a digital service. Given the costs associated with drug discovery or similar areas of research, any increase in efficiency in the research and development phase will result in both large financial returns for customers and significant real-world benefits for humanity. Given the impressive results achieved by Cradle’s platform just two years after its launch, we foresee a bright future for one of Europe’s – and the world’s – most important AI companies.”
Also the US companies Shiru and AlphaFold use AI to accelerate the development of sustainable products in various areas.
Further information: cradle.bio
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