Introduction

On July 21, 2025, Latent Labs officially released LatentX, a web-based AI model designed to democratize protein design by allowing researchers, startups, and pharmaceutical teams to engineer novel proteins directly in their browsers.¹ The model marks a significant leap from prediction-focused systems like AlphaFold to generative design—a core disruption in biotech workflows.
“We have computational ways of assessing how good the designs are,” said Simon Kohl, CEO and founder of Latent Labs and former DeepMind researcher on AlphaFold.¹ “Our platform can deliver viable protein candidates straight to lab testing.”

Why it matters now

• Cloud-native bioengineering: Researchers no longer need specialized infrastructure or steep licensing—protein design is now accessible globally.
• Therapeutics acceleration: Generative capacity enables on-demand creation of antibodies, nanobodies, and enzyme variants.
• Democratized innovation: Academic labs and small biotechs can now enter high-stakes protein engineering without deep pockets.

Call-out

LatentX achieved state-of-the-art lab viability rates, matching expensive sealed systems, all via browser interface.

Business implications

• Pharma R&D teams can prototype therapeutic proteins without infrastructure delays—cutting time-to-test from months to weeks.
• Biotech startups can operate with minimal capital expense and global collaboration via browser-based tooling.
• Cloud/NIM companies may need to develop bio-focused compute pipelines to support live synthetic biology scales.

Looking ahead

Latent Labs plans to roll out enterprise tiers with version control, collaboration workspaces, and audit logs. They’re also developing APIs to integrate LatentX into existing LIMS systems. Analysts predict that by 2027, 30 % of protein-engineering workflows will run on generative AI platforms, transforming R&D economics.

The upshot: LatentX shifts protein design from specialist labs to any browser—opening a new era of scalable, distributed biotech innovation.

Source: TechCrunch, “Latent Labs launches web-based AI model to democratize protein design,” July 21, 2025.¹