Profluent Secures $106 Million in Funding to Advance AI-Driven Protein Design

Emeryville, California – Profluent, a leader in applying frontier AI models to protein design, has successfully closed a $106 million financing round. This significant investment was co-led by Altimeter Capital and Jeff Bezos's Bezos Expeditions, with additional participation from existing investors including Spark Capital, Insight Partners, and Air Street Capital. The new capital brings Profluent's total funding to $150 million, accelerating its mission to make biology programmable for diverse applications.

The funding will be channeled into expanding Profluent's platform capabilities, deepening research and development initiatives, and broadening its commercial reach across therapeutics, agriculture, and biomanufacturing. Profluent founder and CEO Ali Madani stated, "With this funding, we are accelerating the path from lab breakthroughs to real-world applications, creating bespoke proteins to solve challenges in human health and the environment." He further added that partners are already deploying their technology, and R&D efforts are rapidly expanding design capabilities.

Profluent, founded in 2022, is pioneering the use of large-scale generative AI models to design novel proteins. The company has demonstrated that large language models can generate functional proteins and has designed the first AI-created CRISPR system, as noted in publications like Nature Biotech and Nature. Their Protein Atlas, comprising over 115 billion unique proteins, is recognized as the world's largest protein data resource.

The company's technology is already being utilized in various sectors through commercial relationships with entities such as Revvity, Corteva Agrisciences, and The Rett Syndrome Research Trust. Profluent's OpenCRISPR-1, an open-source gene editor, is employed by thousands of commercial operations and academic researchers. Investor Jamin Ball of Altimeter Capital highlighted the immense potential, stating, "We think the next frontier in AI will be biology and drug discovery."

This investment positions Profluent to further develop its AI-designed molecules, including genome editors, antibodies, and enzymes. The company aims to transition AI-designed biological products from research environments to real-world deployment, with a long-term goal of bringing an AI-designed therapeutic to human patients. The company's valuation is now approaching $1 billion, underscoring investor confidence in its innovative approach to programmable biology.