What Profluent does
Profluent is a frontier AI lab for biology that designs entirely new, functional proteins from first principles using generative models. The company trains large protein language models on its proprietary Protein Atlas — a curated dataset of more than 115 billion protein sequences, one of the largest of its kind ever assembled — and uses those models to generate novel sequences for therapeutics, diagnostics, agriculture, and biomanufacturing. Profluent's most prominent release, OpenCRISPR-1, is the world's first AI-designed and openly licensed CRISPR gene editor; the company demonstrated successful editing of the human genome with OpenCRISPR-1 in 2024 and published expanded results in Nature in 2025.
Beyond CRISPR, Profluent's models design enzymes, antibodies, and binders that are difficult or impossible to discover by traditional directed evolution. The company positions itself as the foundation-model layer for programmable biology, much like OpenAI sits beneath consumer text products.
Who it's for
Profluent's customers are pharmaceutical companies, biotech R&D groups, agricultural biotech firms, diagnostics developers, and academic researchers who license AI-designed molecules under commercial or research terms. OpenCRISPR-1 alone is used by thousands of commercial operations and academic labs, and several large pharma partners license private AI-designed protein programs.
Pricing
Profluent does not publish standard pricing. OpenCRISPR-1 is available under an ethical-use license at no cost for qualifying research. Commercial protein-design programs are negotiated as research collaborations, milestone-based licenses, or platform partnerships.
Team & funding
Profluent was founded in 2022 by Ali Madani (CEO), formerly the architect of the ProGen protein-language-model program at Salesforce AI Research. The company is headquartered in Emeryville, California. Profluent has raised $150M in cumulative funding, capped by a $106M Series B announced on November 19 2025, co-led by Altimeter Capital and Bezos Expeditions, with participation from Spark Capital, Insight Partners, and Air Street Capital. The capital is being deployed to scale Profluent's frontier protein models and expand applications across therapeutics, diagnostics, agriculture, and biomanufacturing.