Ex­clu­sive: ‘If you could hal­lu­ci­nate a pro­tein’: Proflu­ent snags $35M for gen­er­a­tive AI mod­els

A small start­up in Berke­ley, CA, wants to help cre­ate the next wave of cus­tom en­zymes for gene edit­ing sys­tems with the help of gen­er­a­tive AI.

To get there, Proflu­ent reeled in an­oth­er $35 mil­lion in fund­ing, added the for­mer head of prod­uct at Ope­nAI to its board and brought in a chief busi­ness of­fi­cer with BD ex­pe­ri­ence at Ed­i­tas, Tome and Vor.

Spark Cap­i­tal led the new fi­nanc­ing, dis­closed Thurs­day morn­ing. Ex­ist­ing in­vestors In­sight Part­ners and Air Street Cap­i­tal re­turned, and an­gel in­vestors like Google Deep­Mind chief sci­en­tist Jeff Dean al­so took part in the round, which builds on­to the $9 mil­lion the com­pa­ny emerged with in Jan­u­ary 2023.

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