EvolutionaryScale unveils ESM3, raises $142M seed from Friedman and Gross

EvolutionaryScale/ESM3

EvolutionaryScale emerged from stealth with ESM3, a generative protein model trained on 2.78B proteins using 10^24 flops, reasoning simultaneously over sequence, structure and function. Raised $142M seed led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, backed by Lux Capital, Amazon and NVentures.

• ESM3 first generative model to reason over all three protein properties at once.
• Team founded by Rives, Sercu, Candido from Meta's FAIR lab, shut down in Aug 2023.
• Roughly a dozen scientists left Meta to continue the protein project independently.