Funding profile · AI protein design

Anthrogen

One reported seed round, $4 million in late 2024, and no SEC Form D found under the company’s name since. The company has since redirected from carbon capture to protein language models without a new financing announcement on the public record.

$4.0MSeed round reported closed, Nov 2024, independent reporting
$0Amount confirmed by SEC Form D for Anthrogen or Arctic Capture
15Team size, per Y Combinator’s company page
9Employees, per Tracxn, as of Aug 2026

Data as of September 22, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
2023 Founded as Arctic Capture Not disclosed Not disclosed Independent
Summer 2024 Y Combinator batch, rebrand to Anthrogen Not disclosed Y Combinator YC data
Nov 12 to 14, 2024 Seed round $4,000,000 reported Co-led by Regen Ventures and BoxGroup. Also Y Combinator, Wayfinder Ventures, Liquid 2 Ventures, Soma Capital, Ritual Capital, Collaborative Fund, Pioneer Fund. Angels: Paul Graham, Kulveer Taggar, Todd Goldberg, Rahul Vohra’s Angel Fund Independent
Since Nov 2024 No later round announced or filed Not applicable Not applicable Not found

What the filings show

No Form D for “Anthrogen” or its former name “Arctic Capture” turned up in an SEC EDGAR company search as of September 25, 2026. That is unusual for a $4 million round with institutional co-leads, since venture funds of that size typically require the issuer to file. A few explanations are possible and none can be confirmed from the public record: the round may have been raised under a different legal entity name not searched here, structured as a note or SAFE that converted before a priced round triggered a filing, raised under an exemption that does not require a Form D, or simply not yet filed. No filing means the amount, the closing date and the investor list all rest on press accounts rather than a signed federal notice.

Reading the filings

  1. Three outlets agree on the headline number.Axios, The American Bazaar and SynBioBeta each independently reported a $4 million seed round co-led by Regen Ventures and BoxGroup, closing around Nov 12 to 14, 2024. Agreement across three outlets that do not work for the company is stronger evidence than a single press release, but it is still not a filing.
  2. No Form D means no independent check on the number.With no SEC filing, there is no way to confirm the $4 million figure against a total offering amount, a total sold, or an investor count the way a Form D would provide. The figure should be read as company-reported and outlet-confirmed, not as a filed amount.
  3. An aggregator disagrees sharply.Tracxn, a data aggregator, lists Anthrogen’s total funding at $500,000 against a seed round with masked investor and amount fields, roughly an eighth of the reported $4 million. Aggregator databases like Tracxn compile from multiple weak signals and are frequently out of date or incomplete for small private companies; the gap here is large enough to flag but not to treat as a competing fact.
  4. The business changed after the money came in.The $4 million was raised, and reported, for a carbon capture and enzyme design business. By October 2025 the company was training and shipping protein language models instead, a materially different product and market than the one investors were pitched in November 2024. No later financing has been reported or filed to indicate whether that pivot came with new capital or was funded from the original round.
  5. The founding team named at the raise has narrowed in later materials.Three co-founders, Ankit Singhal, Connor Lee and Vignesh Karthik, are named in the November 2024 coverage of the round. Y Combinator’s company page, the October 2025 Odyssey preprint’s author list, and a 2026 investor writeup from Ritual Capital each name only Singhal and Lee. Nothing in the public record explains the change.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Product Odyssey, a protein language model family scaled to 102 billion parameters, described in a preprint posted Oct 15, 2025. Public record
Commercial access API described as open for “early access.” No named customers, pricing or revenue disclosed. Company-stated
Original product line CRISPR-engineered photosynthetic bacteria and AI-designed enzymes to convert captured CO2 into fuels and chemicals at a targeted 80% of fossil fuel cost. Not mentioned on the company’s site as of Sep 2026. Discontinued or dropped
Entity type Anthrogen, PBC, a public benefit corporation, per the Odyssey preprint’s author affiliations. Public record

What to watch

  • A Form D covering the reported $4 million round, or a new one covering any later financing, would let the numbers above be checked against a federal filing instead of press accounts.
  • Whether a Series A or similar round follows the October 2025 Odyssey launch, given the model is described as being in early access.
  • Reconciliation of the Tracxn total funding figure with the $4 million figure reported by Axios, The American Bazaar and SynBioBeta.
  • Any public accounting of Vignesh Karthik’s current role, since he was named a co-founder at the round’s close but does not appear in the company’s or its investors’ later materials.

The Anthrogen story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • HelpNow: Shared investor: Liquid 2. An app that aggregates private ambulances and converts rideshare cabs into medical first responder vehicles in India
  • Ligo Biosciences: Shared investor: Liquid 2. A San Francisco startup building generative diffusion models to design enzymes from scratch
  • BluumBio: Shared investor: Shared Future Fund. A four-person Berkeley company making microbial products that eat industrial pollution
  • Culture Biosciences: Shared investor: Boxgroup. A cloud lab that ran other companies’ fermentation for them, now selling the bioreactor itself through Cytiva

Sources

  1. IndependentAnthrogen has raised $4M to develop its AI-powered process of turning CO2 into chemicalsAxios, Katie Fehrenbacher · Nov 12, 2024
  2. IndependentColumbia students’ biotech AI startup closes $4M seed roundThe American Bazaar, Mythili Devarakonda · Nov 14, 2024
  3. IndependentAnthrogen Raises $4M to Tackle Carbon Emissions with CO2-Consuming Microbes and AISynBioBeta · Nov 2024
  4. IndependentAnthrogen company profileTracxn · Oct 10, 2025
  5. Independent30 Under 30 Energy & Green Tech, Anthrogen profileForbes · accessed 2026
  6. IndependentAnthrogen Introduces Odyssey: A 102B Parameter Protein Language Model that Replaces Attention with Consensus and Trains with Discrete DiffusionMarkTechPost, Michal Sutter · Oct 22, 2025
  7. Public recordOdyssey: reconstructing evolution through emergent consensus in the global proteomebioRxiv · Oct 15, 2025
  8. CompanyAnthrogen company websiteanthrogen.com · accessed Sep 25, 2026
  9. CompanyAnthrogen company profile and active foundersY Combinator · accessed Sep 25, 2026
  10. PartnerThe Network Behind Biological Intelligence: The Anthrogen StoryRitual Capital · 2026

Compiled from SEC and other public records and published reports as of September 22, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date. No Form D was found for Anthrogen or Arctic Capture as of this date. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Anthrogen. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.