Adaptyv Raises $40M for AI Biology Lab Automation

Adaptyv, a pioneering biotechnology firm based in Lausanne, has successfully closed a €34.35 million ($40 million) Series A funding round. This significant capital infusion is earmarked for the expansion of its automated laboratory infrastructure, designed to accelerate agentic biology and AI-driven protein design. The round was spearheaded by Highland Europe, with substantial participation from existing backers including Ace Ventures, ByFounders, and Y Combinator, underscoring strong confidence in Adaptyv's innovative approach.

The core of Adaptyv's offering lies in bridging the critical gap between computational protein design and real-world experimental validation. While artificial intelligence has dramatically increased the speed at which potential protein candidates can be generated – often numbering in the thousands – the bottleneck has historically been the laborious and time-consuming process of testing these designs in a wet lab. Adaptyv addresses this by providing an AI-native, automated laboratory environment. This platform transforms digital sequences into tangible experimental data, integrating in-house DNA synthesis, cell-free protein expression, and advanced binding assays with robust quality control.

Since its seed funding round in late 2024, led by Ace Ventures, Adaptyv has experienced remarkable growth. The company has expanded its team from nine to approximately 25 individuals and seen its revenue increase tenfold. Key operational advancements include bringing DNA synthesis in-house and scaling its automated lab capabilities. Furthermore, Adaptyv launched its Proteinbase competition platform, which successfully attracted 680 participants and garnered 10,000 protein designs in a single event, highlighting the platform's appeal and utility within the research community.

Adaptyv's commitment to seamless integration is evident in its public API, now adopted by leading AI platforms such as Boltz, Chai, Cradle, Tamarind, Latent Labs, and Benchling. This connectivity allows AI agents to directly commission experiments, streamlining the discovery pipeline. The company boasts over 100 customers, ranging from cutting-edge AI research labs and top-tier pharmaceutical companies to emerging AI-native drug discovery startups. Recent validation efforts, including a benchmark with Anthropic, demonstrated impressive results: 95% of 1,320 designs submitted for testing were successfully expressed, with a 26.8% hit rate for binding targets, showcasing the platform's efficacy in validating AI-generated hypotheses.

The newly acquired capital will fuel a dual expansion strategy. Horizontally, Adaptyv plans to nearly triple its laboratory capacity by the end of 2026 and continue this growth trajectory into 2027. This expansion includes establishing a new lab and office space in London, complementing its existing facility in Lausanne. Vertically, the company aims to broaden its service offerings beyond binding affinity measurements, which represent a market valued in the hundreds of millions annually. Future capabilities will encompass developability assessments, comprehensive biophysical characterization, and the exploration of next-generation modalities like peptides, antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), and degraders, eventually extending to cell-based functional assays.

The long-term vision for Adaptyv is to create a biological 'gigafactory' – an extensive automated experimental capacity that enables AI to learn from physical reality at a pace comparable to its learning from textual data. By removing laboratory throughput as a constraint, Adaptyv seeks to fundamentally accelerate the progress of biological discovery and innovation, positioning itself as a critical enabler for the future of life sciences.