Helix Bio
Synthetic biology platform. Generative protein design + automated wet lab.
Thesis
Helix Bio sits at the intersection of two compounding curves: generative models for protein design and automated wet-lab execution. Their loop closes in 14 days versus an industry median of 90.
Team
Founders @katz_k (ex-DeepMind AlphaFold) and @yuri_l (ex-Ginkgo). 14 FTE, 9 PhDs. No prior exits — typical for this category.
Traction
3 paying enterprise customers. Reported $1.4M ARR run-rate as of 2026-Q1. Loop throughput at 14d validated by 2 customer interviews.
Risk
Wet-lab CapEx scales sub-linearly with revenue. Regulatory risk on de-novo proteins is non-trivial — FDA pre-IND meeting required before any therapeutic claim.