Insider Brief

• Cradle secured $73 million in Series B funding, led by IVP with support from Index Ventures and Kindred Capital, bringing total funding to over $100 million to advance its AI-powered platform for protein engineering.
• The platform uses generative AI and experimental data to design optimized protein sequences, achieving up to 12x R&D speed improvements and 90% cost reductions, with customers like Novo Nordisk and Johnson & Johnson leveraging its capabilities.
• Cradle plans to expand its wet lab capabilities, scale its engineering team, and enhance market reach, aiming to make protein engineering more accessible and impactful across industries like therapeutics, sustainable materials, and eco-friendly solutions.

PRESS RELEASE — Cradle has announced the successful completion of a $73 million Series B funding round, led by IVP with continued support from Index Ventures and Kindred Capital. The new funding brings Cradle’s total investment to over $100 million, marking a significant milestone in the company’s mission to make AI-powered protein engineering accessible to labs worldwide.

The company stated that engineering proteins holds immense potential for improving human and planetary health, enabling innovations such as new therapeutics, sustainable materials, animal-free foods, eco-friendly pesticides, and oil-free chemicals. According to Cradle, the ability to engineer proteins could fundamentally reshape the world.

Cradle outlined the challenges traditionally faced in protein engineering, describing it as a time-intensive, costly, and error-prone process akin to “searching for a needle in a haystack.” Scientists often spend years conducting experiments at great expense, with uncertain outcomes. Cradle explained that the company was founded to address these challenges using AI, and the progress made toward realizing this vision has been significant.

The platform leverages generative AI models combined with experimental data to design promising protein sequences. Cradle reported that its continuous learning process enables the models to become more effective at engineering sequences that meet specific functional and property requirements.

The company noted that the platform has already delivered meaningful results for customers, reporting research and development speed improvements of 1.2x to 12x and cost reductions of up to 90%. Customers have expressed high satisfaction with the platform, consistently giving it a rating of 8 or higher. Since the platform’s commercial launch earlier this year, Cradle has grown its customer base to over 21 clients and has supported the development of 31 protein projects. Leading companies such as Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Novonesis, and Grifols are among those currently using Cradle’s technology.

Cradle shared that the new funding will be directed toward three key areas:

1. Expanding Research: Enhancing the company’s wet lab capabilities to explore additional protein modalities and improve foundational AI models.
2. Engineering Growth: Scaling the engineering team to address more complex protein engineering challenges.
3. Market Expansion: Increasing go-to-market efforts and operations to bring the platform to more scientific teams worldwide.

The company also welcomed Sam Partovi as Chief Commercial Officer, noting his expertise in scaling life science platforms. As Cradle’s 40th team member, his addition was described as timely given the company’s growth trajectory and plans to expand its impact globally.

As Alex Lim, General Partner at IVP, the company’s new investor put it:

“Biology is one of the domains where generative AI can have the biggest 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 discovery or similar fields of research, any efficiencies at the R&D stage will translate to both major financial returns for customers and significant real-world benefits for humanity. With impressive results delivered by Cradle’s platform just two years after launch, we see a bright future ahead for one of Europe’s — and the world’s — most consequential AI companies.”

Cradle expressed gratitude for the trust and support of its investors, including Alex and the IVP team, Carlos and Sofia from Index Ventures, and Leila from Kindred Capital. The company invited scientists, partners, and potential team members interested in leveraging AI to accelerate scientific discovery to connect with them.

Featured image: Credit: Cradle