Adaptyv Raises $40M Series A to Scale Automated Protein Validation Labs for AI-Driven Drug Discovery
核心洞察
Adaptyv Biosystems (搜索) closed a $40 million Series A led by Highland Europe (搜索), with existing investors Ace Ventures, ByFounders and Y Combinator participating.
The Lausanne-based company operates an automated wet lab that rapidly validates AI-designed proteins, combining synthetic biology, nanofluidics and machine learning.
Adaptyv has grown lab throughput more than fivefold over the past year and now serves over 100 customers, including Roche and Novo Nordisk.
Adaptyv Biosystems (搜索) has closed a $40 million Series A funding round to expand the automated laboratory it operates for the rapid experimental validation of newly designed proteins. The round was led by Highland Europe (搜索), with existing investors Ace Ventures, ByFounders and Y Combinator doubling down. The company, based at the Biopôle life sciences campus in Lausanne, previously raised an $8 million seed round in 2025.
The financing addresses a growing bottleneck in computational biology: AI systems can already propose thousands of new proteins faster than researchers can experimentally test them. Adaptyv aims to close that gap by building automated labs that AI systems can access directly, eventually allowing agents to design an experiment, receive real-world results and decide what to test next.
An Automated Design-Build-Test-Learn Loop
Adaptyv has developed an automated wet lab for the rapid experimental validation of newly designed proteins, combining synthetic biology, nanofluidics and machine learning while substantially reducing the cost per protein. The platform takes a digital protein sequence through DNA synthesis, protein expression and experimental testing, returning physical data on whether the designed molecule actually behaves as intended.
Customers can send designs through Adaptyv's web platform or connect through an API, opening the door for AI agents to request experiments without a scientist manually managing each iteration. This is the basis for what Adaptyv calls "agentic biology": a closed design-build-test-learn loop in which AI does not stop after proposing a molecule but uses experimental feedback to choose its next designs.
The platform makes it easier for protein designers to generate data and engineer new proteins for applications ranging from designed antibodies and novel enzymes to alternative materials.
Validating the Concept with Anthropic
Adaptyv recently put the agentic biology concept to the test with Anthropic (搜索). Claude was used to design protein binders against 16 targets before 1,320 designs were sent to Adaptyv's automated lab for experimental validation. Of those, 354 bound their target, for an average hit rate of 26.8%. Adaptyv said Claude's designs would have beaten the winning designs in five of six comparable protein-design competitions.
Customer Base and Growth
Over the past year, the company has grown its lab throughput more than fivefold and onboarded over 100 customers, from AI-focused biology labs such as Chai Discovery (搜索) and Boltz (搜索) to pharmaceutical groups including Roche and Novo Nordisk, alongside start-ups using AI to accelerate drug discovery.
Expansion Plans
The round will fund growth along two axes. The first is capacity: once a workflow is automated, the company can replicate the workcell with the same protocol and software, and it plans to roughly triple lab capacity by the end of 2026 and keep growing through 2027. A new lab and office will open in London in the fourth quarter of 2026, alongside the expansion in Lausanne, and the team will grow from 25 to around 60 people, focused on production, automation and software.
The second axis is complexity: moving from protein binding, already a market worth several hundred million dollars a year, toward developability and full biophysical characterization, then next-generation modalities such as peptides and degraders, and eventually cell-based function. The company also plans to expand into antibody-drug conjugates.