Protein design firm Profluent announced that it has raised $35 million in funding, bringing the total funding raised by the company to $44 million.
Spark Capital led the funding round, with participation from OpenAI, Salesforce, Octant Bio, and Google, including Jeff Dean, chief scientist of Google DeepMind.
Profluent had raised $9 million in a previous funding round from Insight Partners, Air Street Capital, AIX Ventures, and Convergent Ventures. In addition, Spark Capital general partners Fraser Kelton and Nabeel Hyatt will join Profluent's board of directors.
The company said in a statement that it intends to use the funds raised to support its next growth stage in applying generative artificial intelligence (AI) models to the creation and validation of proteins, and advance its proprietary LLMs and datasets, integrated wet lab capabilities, and CRISPR gene editing.
"Our research at the forefront of AI has enabled Profluent to create large language models that begin to learn the blueprint of nature," Profluent co-founder and CEO Ali Madani said in the firm’s statement. "We are moving biology from being constrained by what can be discovered in nature to being able to design precisely according to our needs via AI. The science is real, and the time is now to proactively create breakthrough medicines that can transform society."
