TechBio

AI-Driven Protein Engineering: A Sub-Sector Emerging Around Lausanne and Zurich

The Swiss Deep Tech Report 2025 counts 55+ VC-backed TechBio startups in Switzerland with USD 732 million raised since 2019 and a combined enterprise value of USD 4.1 billion — the highest EV-to-funding ratio of any sector in the Swiss Deep Tech ecosystem. A concentration of the early-stage activity is in AI-driven protein engineering and biology platforms, anchored at the Biopôle life sciences campus in Lausanne and at research spinoffs from ETH Zurich and EPFL.

Cradle, which applies generative AI to protein sequence design and runs its own wet lab to generate training data, raised a USD 73 million Series B in November 2024 led by IVP, after a USD 24 million Series A in 2023 led by Index Ventures and Kindred Capital, bringing total funding past USD 100 million. Adaptyv Biosystems, an EPFL spinoff based at Biopôle, raised a USD 8 million seed round in October 2025 led by ACE Ventures with participation from ByFounders and Founderful, to expand its automated cloud laboratory for AI-generated protein validation; the company had already tested over 10,000 proteins with more than 30 pharma, biotech, and AI research partners before the round closed. The presence of Isomorphic Labs — Google DeepMind’s drug discovery spinoff — operating out of Zurich alongside established AI research teams at Google, Meta, and Nvidia has contributed to a talent pool at the intersection of machine learning and structural biology that is difficult to replicate in other European cities.

Infrastructure Built for Biology at the Intersection of AI

Switzerland has invested in physical and institutional infrastructure specifically designed to support the biology-AI convergence. The Biopôle campus in Lausanne, co-located with CHUV and EPFL, houses a growing cluster of protein engineering and genomics companies operating on shared lab infrastructure, reducing the capital required to reach experimental validation milestones. The campus model matters in TechBio because wet lab capacity — unlike software development — is expensive and slow to build from scratch, and shared facilities allow early-stage companies to generate biological data before deploying growth capital.

At the sector level, the 2025 funding data reflects maturing activity across multiple modalities. In radiopharmaceuticals, Basel-based NUCLIDIUM closed a CHF 79 million Series B in July 2025 — a field projected to grow from USD 9.1 billion in 2023 to USD 26.5 billion by 2031 — with a nine-investor syndicate spanning Kurma Growth Opportunities Fund, Angelini Ventures, Wellington Partners, and Eurazeo. In AI-driven protein validation, Adaptyv Biosystems raised a USD 8 million seed in October 2025 having already processed over 10,000 proteins with 30+ pharma and AI research partners through its automated cloud lab at Biopôle. In psychiatric drug development, University of Zurich spinoff Reconnect Labs emerged from stealth fully funded in August 2025 targeting AI-driven regenerative therapies for PTSD and addiction.

The spread of modalities — from radiopharmaceuticals to protein engineering to CNS — indicates that Swiss TechBio is not clustering around a single platform technology but building depth across the biology stack, underpinned by the same combination of AI talent and pharma domain expertise in each case.