Latent Labs launches web-based AI model to democratize protein design

About six months after coming out of stealth with $50 million in funding, Latent Labs has released a web-based AI model for programming biology.

Latent Labs model has “achieved state-of-the-art on different metrics” when testing the proteins it developed in a physical lab, according to Latent Labs CEO and founder Simon Kohl, a scientist who previously co-led DeepMind’s AlphaFold’s protein design team. State-of-the-art, or SOTA, is a term often used in the AI field that represents the industry’s best performance to date on a specific task.

“We have computational ways of assessing how good the designs are,” he told TechCrunch, adding that a high percentage of proteins the model creates will be viable when tested in the lab.

The company’s foundational biology model, known as LatentX, enables academic institutions, biotech startups, and pharmaceutical companies to design novel proteins directly in their browser using natural language.

LatentX goes beyond what’s found in nature, creating entirely new molecule designs like nanobodies and antibodies with precise atomic structures. This approach can help develop new therapeutics at much faster rare.

This ability to design entirely new proteins is what distinguishes LatentX from the AlphaFold, according to Kohl.

“Alpha fold is a model for protein structure prediction. So it allows you to visualize existing structures, but it doesn’t, it doesn’t let you generate new proteins,” he said.

In contrast to AI-driven drug discovery companies like Xaira, Recursion or DeepMind spinout Isomorphic Labs, which focus on developing proprietary medicines, Latent Labs’ business model involves licensing its model for use by external organizations.

“Not every company is in a position to build their own AI models, to have their own AI infrastructure, and to have their own AI teams,” Kohl said.

While LatentX is available for free, Kohl said the company intends to eventually charge for advanced features and capabilities as they’re introduced.

Other companies providing open-sourced AI foundational models for drug discovery include Chai Discovery and EvolutionaryScale.

Latent Labs is backed by Radical Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, Google’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei and Eleven Labs CEO Mati Staniszewski.