Funding profile · AI protein design
Diffuse Bio
A Winter 2023 Y Combinator company with a granted patent, a published price list and no Form D. Every dollar figure attached to it comes from a database, and the databases do not agree.
$500KTotal raised, as reported by CB Insights, PitchBook, Tracxn and VCBacked
0Form D filings by any Diffuse Bio entity in SEC EDGAR
5Investors listed by PitchBook, none with a disclosed amount
$30KPublished starting price for a RamaX screening or optimization project
Data as of September 24, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled. Database figures are labeled by vendor.
Rounds at a glance
| When | Round | Amount | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Winter 2023 | Y Combinator batch | Not disclosed for this company | Y Combinator | YC batch data |
| Jan 1, 2023 | Accelerator or incubator deal | Not disclosed | Not listed | PitchBook |
| Apr 2023 | Pre-seed, per one vendor | $500,000 cumulative | Y Combinator, Fellows Fund | VCBacked |
| Sep 1, 2023 | Last known round, per another vendor | Not disclosed | Fellows Fund | Bounce Watch |
| 2023 | Seed, per a third vendor | $500,000 from one round | Y Combinator | Tracxn |
| Mar 4, 2024 | Early stage VC | Not disclosed | Not listed | PitchBook |
| To date | Cumulative, per vendor | $500,000, or $130,000, or $0 | Y Combinator, Fellows Fund, GreatPoint Ventures, Humba Ventures, one angel | Vendors disagree |
What the public record shows
SEC EDGAR · Form D search · run Sep 24, 2026
- Query
- Company names beginning Diffuse, form type D
- Result
- Five filers, all Illinois investment vehicles under the Diffuse Digital and Diffuse Inc names
- Diffuse Bio
- No entity, no CIK, no Form D
- Mentions
- No Form D by another filer names the company
- Reading
- SAFEs sold under Section 4(a)(2) carry no Form D obligation, so silence is not evidence of no money
USPTO · Patent 12,573,475 B2 · granted Mar 10, 2026
- Title
- Protein sequence and structure generation with denoising diffusion probabilistic models
- Priority
- May 19, 2022, provisional 63/343,789
- Filed
- May 18, 2023, application 18/199,144
- Inventors
- Namrata Anand and Tudor Achim
- Assignee
- Diffuse Bio, Inc., California
- Assignment
- Signed Dec 9 and Dec 10, 2024, reel and frame 072272/0767
Reading the record
- The reported total is exactly the accelerator check.Four databases put lifetime funding at $500,000. Y Combinator publishes its standard deal at $500,000, structured as $125,000 on a post-money SAFE for 7 percent plus $375,000 on an uncapped most favored nation SAFE. The match to the dollar is a strong hint that the vendors are recording the batch investment and nothing else.
- Five investors and $500,000 do not fit together.PitchBook names Y Combinator, Fellows Fund, GreatPoint Ventures, Humba Ventures and one angel. Spread the reported total across five names and the average check is $100,000. That is angel arithmetic, not a priced seed round, so either the total is stale or some investors came in on instruments nobody has sized.
- The vendors do not agree.CB Insights, PitchBook, Tracxn and VCBacked say $500,000. Simplify says $130,000 across one round. GetLatka says $0. When vendors diverge this far on a company with no Form D, none of them is working from a primary document.
- Three different dates for the same post-batch money.VCBacked dates the last round April 2023. Bounce Watch dates it September 1, 2023, and attributes it to Fellows Fund. PitchBook logs an early stage VC deal on March 4, 2024 with no amount. Those are three inconsistent stories about one financing, and no filing exists to settle them.
- The IP moved into the company late.The provisional was filed May 19, 2022, before the batch. The inventors assigned it to Diffuse Bio, Inc. on December 9 and 10, 2024, and the patent granted March 10, 2026. A December 2024 assignment is the kind of housekeeping that usually precedes a financing or a diligence process, though nothing in the record says which.
- Revenue figures are estimates, not disclosures.GetLatka lists $1.5 million of 2024 revenue as its own estimate and Extruct repeats it. The company has never published a revenue figure. It has published a price list: screening or optimization from $30,000, discovery from $50,000, less for customers who share data. PitchBook counts 9 employees, GetLatka 10.
Commercial signals
| Signal | Detail | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Products shipped | DiffuseSandbox and DSG2-mini, Jun 11, 2025. RamaX, Dec 16, 2025. Design to screening integration, Feb 2, 2026. RamaX Opt, Mar 25, 2026. ProxyTm, May 6, 2026. | Company-stated |
| Pricing | RamaX Screen and Opt from $30,000, excluding DNA synthesis. RamaX Discovery from $50,000. | Company-stated |
| Customers | Two anonymized partner campaigns of 2,000 and 6,000 designed minibinders, each reaching validated hits in under two weeks. No partner named, no contract value given. | Company-stated |
| Intellectual property | One granted US patent and its pre-grant publication, US 2023/0377690 A1, from a May 2022 priority. | Public record |
| Category comparison | Chai Discovery, on the same problem, raised $70M in Aug 2025, $130M in Dec 2025 at $1.3B, and $400M in Jul 2026 at $3.8B. EvolutionaryScale raised $142M in 2024. | Independent |
What to watch
- A first Form D, due within 15 days of the first sale in any Regulation D offering. It would be the first primary figure for this company.
- Whether the March 2024 PitchBook entry ever acquires an amount and a lead.
- Any named partner or licensing agreement, which would turn two anonymized campaigns into revenue.
- Pricing changes on RamaX, the only public number the company controls.
- Whether a category funded at Chai Discovery scale leaves room for a nine person team selling screening.
The Diffuse Bio story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordEDGAR company search, form type D, company name Diffuse
- Public recordUS patent 12,573,475 B2 with assignment history
- Public recordThe Y Combinator Standard Deal
- IndependentDiffuse Bio profile, deals and investors
- IndependentDiffuse Bio profile, total raised
- IndependentDiffuse Bio funding rounds and investors
- IndependentDiffuse Bio funding and investors, pre-seed
- IndependentDiffuse Bio funding and signals
- IndependentDiffuse Bio funding, revenue and team estimates
- IndependentChai’s the Limit for AI Antibody Designer After $130M Series B
- IndependentChai Discovery Announces $400M Series C to Advance AI-Driven Molecular Design
- IndependentEvolutionaryScale raises $142M and unveils ESM3
- CompanyRamaX workflows and pricing page
- CompanyDiffuse Bio Announces Push-Button Platform for Ultra-Fast Biologics Discovery at Scale
- CompanyDiffuse Bio Launches DSG2-mini AI Model for Protein Binder Design
Compiled from SEC, USPTO and other public records and published reports as of September 24, 2026. No Form D has been filed by this company; the funding figures above come from commercial databases and are labeled by vendor. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Diffuse Bio. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.