David Younger

CEO, A-Alpha Bio

David Younger is the Co-Founder and CEO of A-Alpha Bio, a Seattle-based biotechnology company that generates experimental data at the scale modern AI protein engineering models require, and applies those models to therapeutic programs with pharmaceutical partners. David invented A-Alpha Bio’s AlphaSeq platform with Scientific Advisors David Baker and Eric Klavins at the University of Washington, where he earned his PhD in Bioengineering. David’s technical expertise spans synthetic biology and protein engineering.

A-Alpha Bio measures, predicts, and engineers protein-protein interactions at scale. Our experimental platform, AlphaSeq, enables the rapid and quantitative measurement of millions of protein-protein binding affinities simultaneously. Our AI platform, AlphaBind, is trained on the world’s largest protein-protein interaction database and predicts binding strength from sequence. We work with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies including Amgen, BMS, Novo Nordisk, GSK, Boltz, and others through strategic partnerships, data and platform services, and the Atlas Data Consortium, a subscription model through which members design experiments each quarter and receive non-exclusive licenses to every dataset the consortium produces.

A-Alpha spun out of the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design and Center for Synthetic Biology in 2018. Initial support came from a National Science Foundation SBIR and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. We are now a team of 40 and have raised ~$50M from leading life-science and technology investors including Madrona, Xontogeny/Perceptive, and Lux Capital.