Cradle, a Netherlands-based generative artificial intelligence (genAI) biotech startup, has raised $73 million in a Series B funding round.
The round was led by Silicon valley VC firm IVP, which is famous for backing successfully established companies like Uber and Netflix. AI company Perplexity is another feather in its cap.
The company had earlier raised a $24 million Series A round in November 2023.
“This brings our total funding to over $100 million – a major step toward our goal of bringing AI-powered protein engineering to every lab around the world,” the company said in a statement.
Furthermore, existing investors Index Ventures and Kindred Capital also participated in this round.
So What Does Cradle Do?
The company is known to leverage AI to transform the process of molecule discovery.
In fact, huge pharmaceutical companies like Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, Novonesis and Grifols use Cradle.
The company’s software aims to make the development of new drugs, chemicals, and agricultural products more efficient and cost-effective by using generative AI to design protein sequences.
This approach allows Cradle to offer AI-powered SaaS products for molecule discovery, avoiding the high costs and long timelines associated with developing molecules themselves.
However, the company outlined the challenges too.
“The challenge in protein engineering has been clear: developing new protein based products through traditional methods is time-intensive, costly and error-prone. It’s like searching for a needle in a haystack,” said Cradle.
”Scientists often spend years running experiments, using millions of dollars in resources, with no guarantee of success. We started Cradle because we believed AI could play a meaningful role in solving this challenge, and we’re excited to see this vision becoming a reality,” the company added.
Investor’s Perspective
Commenting on the investment, Alex Lim, General Partner at IVP, said, “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.”
Lim said that 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,” he added.
