Ridge Biotechnologies, a new entrant in the biotech sector focused on precision enzyme engineering and targeted drug design, has emerged from stealth with $25 million in seed financing. The oversubscribed round was led by Sutter Hill Ventures, which also incubated the company, with participation from Overlap Holdings and other investors.
The funding will be used to scale operations, expand technology partnerships, and advance discovery programs aimed at creating a new class of precision-designed therapeutic enzymes.
The company’s platform combines proprietary machine learning models with high-throughput, cell-free experimentation to accelerate the design of enzymes and targeted delivery systems. This approach enables applications across a wide range of therapeutic areas, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), in vivo CAR-T therapies, targeted nucleic acid delivery, small molecule biocatalysis, radiotherapies, and enzyme-based therapeutics.
By generating vast experimental datasets—up to a million times more sequence-function data than conventional methods—Ridge Bio can train custom AI models to design highly specific and effective drug components.
Ridge Bio’s first commercial offerings are its NativeLink enzymes and ProTrigger linkers. NativeLink enzymes allow drug developers to precisely modify therapeutic proteins without altering their sequence, cell lines, or upstream manufacturing processes. This enables the addition of diverse payloads, extension of drug half-life, and integration of precision targeting systems while avoiding common stability and manufacturing issues. The flagship NativeLink — AXC enzyme can produce homogeneous antibody modifications, support user-defined drug-to-antibody ratios, and even upgrade existing ADC products to dual-payload formats without process changes.
ProTrigger linkers are AI-designed, protease-cleavable systems that release or activate therapeutic payloads only at targeted sites in the body. These linkers can open new ADC targets, reduce off-target toxicity, and address challenging environments such as the tumor microenvironment and stroma. Ridge Bio has already entered into a collaboration with a leading ADC-focused biotech to integrate these technologies into next-generation cancer therapies.
The company is led by co-founder and CEO Weston Kightlinger, PhD, a serial entrepreneur with expertise in cell-free synthesis and enzyme design, and former co-founder and CTO of SwiftScale Biologics. Ridge Bio’s advisory board includes prominent scientists such as Nobel Laureate Carolyn Bertozzi and leaders from institutions including MIT, Stanford, and the University of Copenhagen. Its founding scientific team brings deep experience in AI-driven protein engineering, bioconjugation, and drug development from both academia and industry.
With its combination of advanced AI, high-throughput experimentation, and expert leadership, Ridge Biotechnologies aims to redefine how complex therapeutics are designed, enabling safer, more precise, and more effective treatments across multiple disease areas.
KEY QUOTES:
“Drug development should never be limited by the complexity of molecules we can precisely construct, off-target toxicities, or binding-based mechanisms of action. Machine learning has dramatically expanded our ability to design enzymatic systems that can solve these problems, but unlocking their full potential requires massive experimental datasets. At Ridge Bio, we generate those datasets at unprecedented speed and scale — up to a million-fold more sequence-function data than conventional methods in a fraction of the time. We use custom-built ML models to apply this data to enzyme and conditionally active drug design, giving our partners powerful tools to create safer, more precise medicines,” said Kightlinger, who built Ridge as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SHV where he remains a Strategic Advisor. “With the support of great investors and a world-class founding team, we are scaling operations, expanding our technology partnerships in bioconjugates, and advancing our discovery programs towards our longer-term goal of developing a new class of precision-designed therapeutic enzymes. The strong, early interest from leading biopharma companies and CDMOs validates our vision and inspires us to accelerate the delivery of breakthrough medicines that make a real difference for patients.”
Weston Kightlinger, who built Ridge as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at SHV where he remains a Strategic Advisor
“What used to take years can now be done in weeks, thanks to the combination of cell-free experimentation and machine learning. Together, they have created a step-change in our ability to design and leverage enzymes and prodrugs with exquisite specificity. That specificity is at the heart of Ridge Bio’s technologies and the next generation of precisely designed therapeutics.”
Mike Jewett, Professor of Bioengineering at Stanford University and Ridge Bio’s Academic Co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board Chair
“Ridge Bio is the perfect example of our approach to building companies: back world-class founders and help them attract the incredible teams they need to solve tough technical problems and unlock huge markets. Ridge Bio’s capabilities across machine learning and wet lab bioengineering positions the company to build drugs that no one else can and enable a new class of precisely engineered enzyme-based therapeutics. Each founding member of this team could have started something on their own, but they chose to join Ridge because they recognized that together they could do things no one else could do and, as a group, define the future of precision therapeutics.”
Keith Loebner, PhD, Managing Director at SHV
“Ridge Bio is at the forefront of three key trends, next-generation bioconjugates, protein design, and enzymatic therapeutics. Their AI and experimental platform are very unique and its already generating products that enable drug developers to differentiate themselves from competitors, not only through improved manufacturing but also through improved therapeutic indices while simultaneously unlocking the power of catalytic medicines.”
Dr. Bertozzi, whose work on biorthogonal chemistry won her a Nobel Prize and has been pivotal in guiding the development of modern bioconjugates
