Profluent just raised $106M led by Jeff Bezos to make biology programmable.

Founder Ali Madani started at Salesforce's moonshot ProGen project in 2020, left in 2022, and partnered with UW researcher Alexander Meeske.

• $106M Series B (Bezos Expeditions, Altimeter)
• Approaching $1B valuation
• 115B protein database (largest globally)
• Partners: Revvity ($11B), Corteva, Ensoma
• AI models design custom proteins from human language

How it happened:
• Identified AI-biology convergence pre-ChatGPT boom
• Published Nature Biotechnology paper establishing credibility
• Left corporate to focus full-time with academic co-founder
• Built massive proprietary dataset (115B proteins)
• Proved scaling laws work for protein design
• Secured commercial partnerships before major funding

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2025/11/19/jeff-bezos-is-backing-an-ai-startup-aiming-to-make-proteins-programmable/

Takeaway: Academic research + commercial partnerships + proprietary data = billion-dollar biotech validation.

Source: Forbes

Brewed by Startup Beaker.