Cradle, which uses AI to help design proteins and says its SaaS model is popular, raised a $73M Series B led by IVP, after a $24M Series A in November 2023
Using AI to accelerate biotech is fast becoming standard practice, and companies offering services to deploy the tech quickly are seeing big uptake and new investment.
Context & Ripple Effects
Cradle’s Series B follows its $24M Series A for AI-assisted protein engineering less than a year earlier, giving the company more capital to pursue its software-led approach. The financing also sits alongside funding for AI drug-development platforms such as Formation Bio’s pharma-and-biotech co-development model.
First-order effects
- Cradle gains $73M in Series B funding, led by IVP, to expand its AI protein-design SaaS business.
- IVP becomes a major backer of Cradle, while the company’s earlier Series A investors now have a better-funded platform pursuing customer adoption.
Second-order effects
- The round raises the competitive bar for AI biology companies selling workflow software or design tools: they must show that their products can be deployed and adopted, not merely that their models are technically capable.
- Biotech and pharma customers gain another well-capitalized option for bringing AI into protein-engineering workflows, potentially increasing pressure on incumbent research-software vendors to add or partner for AI capabilities.
Third-order effects
- If adoption continues, AI in biotech is likely to be financed and bought increasingly as operational software embedded in research workflows rather than as a standalone experimental capability.
- The durable advantage may shift toward companies that combine models with customer workflow integration and biological-data feedback loops; whether that produces platform concentration remains uncertain.
The trend: AI biology is moving from model-building narratives toward commercial software platforms designed to fit directly into biotech research and development workflows.