World’s Richest Person Joins Seventy Six Million USD Funding Round For Biotech Startup Led by Stanford Scientist

On Thursday, Nautilus, a biotech startup, declared a seventy-six million USD Series B investment round led by Vulcan Capital. Notably, Vulcan Capital is the multi-billion-dollar holding company formed by Paul Allen, the late co-founder of Microsoft. The Venture Capital arm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Bezos Expeditions also invested in the round, along with key biotech firm Perceptive Advisors and Defy Partners. The startup received more investment from early backers including Madrona Venture Group, AME Cloud Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Bolt.

During an interview with GeekWire this week, the co-founder of the startup, Sujal Patel said,

“It didn’t take me very long to realize Parag was on to something.”

The co-founder and chief scientist of the startup, Parag Mallick mentioned,

“We are creating a platform to enable a fundamental transformation in how people look at biology.”

In a blog post, a16z General Partner Vijay Pande mentioned,

“It will be a feat of technology in the world of bio that will be just as fundamental a leap forward, and with just as massive consequences, as sequencing the human genome.”

In a few ways, the startup desires to democratize proteomics, analogous to how corporations like Illumina, which is a publicly-traded biotech giant, have done with genomics.