This whole process takes a long time — and costs a lot of money. Which is where Cradle’s web-based software comes in. When prompted, Cradle’s AI platform can generate a sequence of a molecule that has a higher probability of matching what researchers are looking for, than when scientists need to try everything out for themselves. 

This equals fewer and more successful experiments, drastically reducing R&D time and costs. For most projects, this means they can proceed at twice the speed compared to the industry average.

Putting AI to good use for future generations

Cradle’s proprietary AI model has been trained on billions of protein sequences, as well as data generated in the company’s own wet laboratory.

“It dramatically increases the probability that your molecule has the characteristics that you care about when you try it out in your laboratory, and that significantly accelerates R&D time, and therefore dramatically reduces the cost of the R&D phase for bringing these types of products to market,” van Grieken, previously Senior Product Manager for Google AI, added. 

Why did van Grieken leave a cosy job at Google to set up a synbio AI startup in the Netherlands? “Because I have two young daughters who are three and six. And they’re gonna ask me, 10 years from now, ‘what did you do when the earth caught fire?’ And the answer could not be ‘I was a plumber for an advertising company’.”

“For me personally, success would be helping a company to make a bio-based version that replaces some petrochemical or animal-based product, and does that better and cheaper. And that more of these companies start existing in the world.”

Increased demand for synbio software

Cradle, founded by van Grieken and bioengineer Elise de Reuse in 2021, has already signed up with industry partners including Johnson & Johnson, and just announced the $24mn Series A funding round. It is now working on more than 12 R&D projects including vaccines and antibodies.