Ligo Biosciences
Also known as Ligo, Ligo Bio
Designs enzymes with its own models, Artios for the protein backbone and the sequence, and tests the designs in its own lab; it built BioBasicsBench, a wet-lab data benchmark, with OpenAI.
Money and evidence
Latest round, Accelerator (Y Combinator, Summer 2024), 2024-08-16: the record then held no research entry for the company. The first research entry is dated 2026-10-20; the highest level so far is 4 (Tested in the physical world).
Rounds and research, on one timeline
- 2026-11-06Research
Level 2 · Computed
OpenAI and Ligo's BioBasicsBench scores AI agents on 100 tasks built from real wet-lab data, and GPT-6 Astra earns 66.7% of
the points Reading which colonies carry the right plasmid, or whether a control plate is valid, is routine work an agent beside a biologist would do, and tasks taken from a lab's own runs keep the ambiguous images that figures chosen for a paper leave out. The failures shown are of that kind: Astra sorted colony PCR lanes into the right groups, then took the larger product as success and picked colonies still carrying the old plasmid.
- 2026-10-20Research
Level 4 · Tested in the physical world
Ligo Biosciences' Artios designed esterases from scratch, and 17 of 88 were active in the company's
own screen Directed evolution can only improve an enzyme that already exists, so a reaction with no natural starting point has none. Past de novo luciferases came from huge screens: the paper notes LuxSit was one of three hits among 7,648 designs. Artios reports hits from a single plate, after about a day of computation that generates up to a million backbones, a week for the DNA and two days of assays. Mutating either catalytic residue of its best luciferase to alanine dropped the light to the no-enzyme level, so the activity comes from the designed site.
- 2024-08-16Accelerator (Y Combinator, Summer 2024)Round
Y Combinator backing; amount not stated
Not stated
Y Combinator's own company page lists Ligo in its Summer 2024 batch; the date is that of the company's launch post on Y Combinator (https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Lcv-ligo-biosciences-generative-enzyme-design-for-the-chemical-industry). No source read states an amount or a later round; figures in investor databases were not used.
Research entries are the timeline's graded entries that name this company. A level grades one claim, not the company, and a blank can mean the record has not caught up rather than that nothing was published.
On the investors' own sites
Investors that name this company on their own site, in a portfolio or their own announcement. A ✓ in a round marks the same investor.
- Y CombinatorBatch: Summer 2024ycombinator.com ↗
Its investors also backed
Other companies on this page whose rounds name the same investor.
- Y CombinatorDiscovered Materials