AI-Powered Biotech Revolution: Google Alum’s Startup Secures $24 Million!

Cradle, a biotech startup based in Europe, has secured $24 million in funding to support its mission of utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate and streamline the process of protein design and engineering for scientists.

Index Ventures led the Series A round, which was joined by Kindred Capital, Chris Gibson, founder of Recursion Pharmaceuticals Inc., and Tom Glocer, former CEO of Thomson Reuters Corp. and Merck & Co. board member, Cradle said Tuesday. The startup has raised a total of $33 million to date, including last year’s seed round.

Cradle uses generative artificial intelligence to help create proteins that do not exist in nature. It is working on more than a dozen projects to design a wide range of protein sequences and 3D structures for enzymes, vaccines, lab-grown food and other materials.

Founded in 2021, the startup’s customers include Johnson & Johnson, Novozymes A/S and Twist Bioscience Corp. It has offices in Delft, Holland, and Zurich.

Generative AI, popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, can transform drug development. Cradle’s proprietary generative AI, trained on billions of protein sequences and data generated in its own laboratories, helps biologists design better proteins and accelerate research and development.

“The results show that Cradle’s technology leads to fewer but more successful experiments and faster progress,” said Stef van Grieken, its founder and CEO, who previously led product development at Google Brain.

Generative AI capabilities can improve the chances of solving protein engineering challenges that cannot be addressed with existing tools, Cradle said. For example, biopharmaceutical companies spend an average of $22 million and 42 months on research to get one potential product ready for clinical testing. Even then, only about a third of these progress to clinical trials, according to Cradle.

“It’s still very early days in this industry, we’re maybe at GPT 0.5,” Van Grieken said in a video interview. “So many great startups are starting to be built at the intersection of science and artificial intelligence.”

Cradle’s web-based software makes it easy for biotech companies to make their data available for generative AI and machine learning tools. The company has about 20 machine learning engineers and biotech researchers, and plans to use the new capital to expand its team and build new design and lab facilities.

“The application of artificial intelligence to biology is going to be revolutionary,” said Sofia Dolfe, partner at Index Ventures.