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Cradle

Protein design platform

Cradle logo
21-100 employees
  • Healthcare
  • B2B
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Deep Tech
  • Biology
  • Machine Learning
Hof van Delft, Delft, Netherlands

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Company mission

To help biologists design improved proteins in record time using powerful predictive and generative ML models, to ultimately help more people build with biology, replacing traditional farms and factories for a more sustainable world.

Led by a woman
Top investors

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back within 2 weeks

Our take

Designing proteins for a specific use or target is a complex task, with the functionality and structure of these macromolecules being difficult to model. Hence, protein design - essentially the "custom building" of proteins - is a relatively undeveloped part of molecular biology.

Cradle is hoping to help change this, by delivering a platform that designs custom proteins from a prompt. The idea is to apply the same large language models that are tackling language translation, chatbots, and web search, to biology - treating the code of DNA as it would any language.

The company's prospect is certainly an exciting one, with the range of applications for custom proteins spanning therapeutics, catalysis, cosmetics and many more. The tech is in its early days for now, and Cradle faces challenges such as determining when a suggested sequence is just incorrect, but as it develops further it will certainly be a company to keep an eye on.

Steph headshot

Steph

Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle

Benefits

  • 25 vacation days
  • Pension plan
  • 6 months of paid parental leave
  • Equipment of your choice
  • Various training and career development opportunities

Funding (2 rounds)

Nov 2023

$24m

SERIES A

Nov 2022

$5.8m

SEED

Total funding: $29.8m

This company has top investors

Leadership

Stef van Grieken

(Co-founder & CEO)

Worked at Google for 7 years, ultimately as Senior/Group Project Manager. Was also Chair Of The Board at the Open State Foundation for 7 years, and a former Founder in Residence at Startupbootcamp.

Jelle Prins

(Co-founder)

Also Co-founder at Operator Exchange. Former Director of Product Design for Uber, and founded Moop that was acquired by Uber.

Harmen van Rossum

(Co-founder)

Former PhD researcher at the Industrial Microbiology Section of TU Delft. Spent 3 years at Zymergen, working with the design, development and implementation of high-throughput, automated microbial genome engineering workflows.

Elise de Reus

(Co-founder)

Has worked as a Scientist in Microbial Development for Zymergen, as well as on a Fungal Strain Engineering Project for Perfect Day. Previously a Strategic Planner at FrieslandCampina, and developed a "Technology for Biobased Products" course for edX.org.

Eli Bixby

(Co-founder & Senior ML Engineer)

Worked as a Software Engineer at Google for 5 years. Completed Summer Research Fellowships at Oberlin College and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as well as interning at Oregon Health Sciences University.