Zelixir
Uses AI protein structure prediction and enzyme design to build synthetic-biology production routes; first product is an enzyme-made natural flavour made at a Changzhou plant.
Money and evidence
Latest round, Series A, 2023-05-25: the record then held no research entry for the company. The first research entry is dated 2025-03-20; the highest level so far is 4 (Tested in the physical world).
Rounds and research, on one timeline
- 2026-10-21Research
Level 4 · Tested in the physical world
Westlake University's Pinal turns a sentence describing the job into candidate proteins, and candidates for four different jobs worked in the lab
Design models typically start from a natural protein to improve, or need a person to turn the goal into shape and sequence constraints first. Pinal takes the goal as a sentence, which is a different interface: the biologist says what the protein should do and gets candidates to test. The weights are on Hugging Face and the code is Apache-2.0, so the claim can be tried by anyone.
- 2026-10-16Research
Level 4 · Tested in the physical world
EZPro-Fit, a model that designs an enzyme's protein and its DNA together, proposed cellulase variants; of 13 tested, two were both more heat-stable and more active
Most protein design stops at the amino-acid sequence; this model also writes the DNA the host cell will read, and the lab test asked for two properties at once, heat stability and activity, which often pull against each other. The double mutant D218E/S262I shows that pull: the most stable variant at 78.12 °C, it kept about a third of the activity.
- 2026-04-09Research
Level 4 · Tested in the physical world
Five models that predict how fast an enzyme works, Zelixir's own CataPro among them, picked xylanase mutants for the lab; under one in ten of each model's picks was 20% more active
These models are offered as a way to shortlist enzyme mutants and to fill gaps in metabolic models. Run partly by CataPro's own authors, this test says they cannot yet do the first: they react when the active site is broken but ignore the molecule being converted, unable to tell a substrate from its product or an inhibitor. The authors conclude they work at best as a first filter; CataPro's picks were among the better three, though few beat the starting enzyme.
- 2025-03-20Research
Level 4 · Tested in the physical world
Zelixir and Shandong University's CataPro predicts how fast enzymes work, and helped find a vanillin-making enzyme 19.5 times as active as the starting one
Enzyme speed is a large part of whether a biomanufacturing route pays, and here a prediction led to enzymes made and measured. It is one reaction, five candidates and relative activity measured by a Zelixir author, and the model only narrowed a list that sequence and structure filtering also shaped. On TurNuP's test set its fit on the least familiar enzymes was weak (R squared 0.13 against 0.33) until retrained on TurNuP's data. The paper does not say whether this vanillin work is the flavour Zelixir now makes.
- 2023-05-25Series ARound
over 100 million yuan
For: R&D and synthetic-biology pipeline
Models and platform
Lead · Qingdao Qingchi Venture FundHM CapitalHongfeng InvestmentQiantang Venture
On the deal: Guoqiang Lou (Founding Partner, Hongfeng Investment); Ranting Qian (Partner, Qingdao Qingchi Venture Fund)
- 2022-05AngelRound
undisclosed; angel and Pre-A together over 100 million yuan
Not stated
Date is when VBDATA reported the two rounds (completed within the first year); exact closing dates not given.
- 2022-05Pre-A
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.
- CDH Investmentscdhfund.com ↗
Other backers, round not stated
Named as backers in investor databases, reports or the investors' own posts; no source read places them in a round on the record.
Hangshi Fund
Its investors also backed
Other companies on this page whose rounds name the same investor.
- GL VenturesHelixon (Earendil Labs), StoneWise, DP Technology, Deep Principle