Profluent

Profluent is an AI company that trains large language models on the language of proteins to design new ones — including, notably, gene editors. In a landmark demonstration it open-sourced OpenCRISPR-1, a functional CRISPR gene editor designed by AI rather than found in nature, showing that generative models can produce working molecular machines, not just plausible sequences. The company has described building a large "Protein Atlas" spanning billions of proteins to train on, and raised significant funding, with backers including Altimeter and Bezos Expeditions. Profluent sits at the frontier of AI-for-biology, and its artifacts, like OpenCRISPR, are genuine scientific milestones. The honest framing is that these are early, research-stage results — powerful proof that AI can design biology, with the long work of turning designed editors and proteins into validated therapies still ahead.