Mission BioCapital and Santé Ventures led a $41.5m Series A round in AI Proteins.

Mission BioCapital, a VC firm making pivotal early-stage investments in biotech companies, and Santé Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on innovative technologies in healthcare and information, led a $41.5m Series A round in AI Proteins, a biotech company, with participation from Lightchain Capital and Cobro Ventures. “Natural proteins evolved under selective pressures in the environment. They did not evolve to be modern medicine. Antibodies changed patient care but are limited by their natural origin. The next wave of biologic medicines will do things that are impossible for natural proteins because they’re made de novo. We start our design process with a target product profile and work backward to create the exact molecule needed. This level of control and precision wasn’t possible before. By industrializing the design-build-test cycle, we generate and optimize miniprotein candidates at speed and scale, and harvest massive datasets that we use to improve our models and accelerate our progress,” Chris Bahl, PhD, AI Proteins Founder and CEO.