Nabla Bio Backs $1B Takeda Expansion with Commercial and Engineering Hiring Push

Cambridge-based Nabla Bio is scaling its operations following a major expansion of its pharmaceutical partnerships. After entering a multi-year research collaboration with Takeda Pharmaceuticals valued at up to $1 billion in upfront and milestone payments, the 21-person company is building out a dedicated commercial and software security team across the United States and Europe.

Founded in 2020 through Y Combinator’s S20 batch, Nabla Bio operates at the intersection of machine learning and synthetic biology. The company applies natural language processing algorithms to amino acid sequences to predict biophysical profiles for therapeutic candidates, generating predictive biophysical fingerprints for up to 1 million antibodies in a single step.

Inside the Joint Atomic Modeling Platform

Traditional antibody development relies on screening large libraries through iterative laboratory experiments. Nabla Bio designs candidate molecules computationally using its flagship artificial intelligence platform, Joint Atomic Modeling (JAM).

As reported by Chemical & Engineering News, JAM functions as "molecular auto-complete" for protein design, according to co-founder and CEO Surge Biswas. When presented with a specific biological target, the platform generates complementary antibody sequences designed to bind at precise target epitopes. The model is trained on public protein databases combined with high-throughput experimental data produced in Nabla's Cambridge wet labs, where the team can generate 1 million antibody variants and test target binding within two to three weeks.

The company focuses on generating protein therapeutics rather than small molecules because larger protein surface areas offer stronger, more selective target binding. Recent work on Nabla's updated model, JAM-2, demonstrated binding against 28 distinct targets, including difficult-to-drug G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), as covered by Endpoints News. Co-founder and president Frances Anastassacos noted that the platform optimizes candidates for practical drug requirements, including tissue delivery and manufacturability, to turn antibody development into a direct design process rather than trial and error.

Harvard Roots and Leadership

Nabla Bio was founded by Biswas and Anastassacos, who met as doctoral students at Harvard University while working on the same research floor.

Biswas completed his PhD in George Church's laboratory at Harvard, spending more than a decade applying machine learning and synthetic biology to protein engineering and microbiome systems. Anastassacos earned her PhD in biological and biomedical sciences at Harvard in 2019, working in William Shih's laboratory on therapeutic applications of DNA origami. Before co-founding Nabla Bio, she worked in biotechnology venture capital and brought eight years of chemistry and synthetic biology experience to the venture.

The company raised an $11 million seed round in 2021 led by Khosla Ventures and Zetta Venture Partners, followed by a $26 million Series A led by Radical Ventures, bringing total equity funding to nearly $37 million. Backers also include Fifty Years, Boom Capital Ventures, Cantos, Pillar VC, and the National Science Foundation. Alongside its equity funding, Nabla secured research collaborations totaling over $550 million in potential deal value with pharmaceutical partners including AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Takeda.

Takeda Expansion and Enterprise Shift

The second agreement with Takeda, signed in late 2025, significantly broadened the scope of Nabla's initial 2021 partnership. Takeda paid double-digit millions upfront for expanded access to the JAM platform across multiple pipeline programs, with biobucks and downstream milestones pushing the potential deal value to $1 billion.

The deal validates Nabla’s computational candidates in an environment where pharmaceutical companies have begun narrowing external pipelines. While Takeda pruned other external partnerships during 2026, it increased its reliance on Nabla's platform to advance de novo biologics against targets that proved difficult with traditional laboratory discovery methods.

That commercial traction is driving a shift in Nabla's hiring profile. Although the company remains lean at 21 employees, its open job listings reflect an effort to commercialize and market the platform to large enterprise biopharma accounts. The team is recruiting senior commercial leaders, including an Enterprise Sales Director and a Head of Marketing, to manage biopharma accounts and pipeline development.

Current Hiring Priorities

Nabla Bio lists nine open positions spanning business development, product management, marketing, and technical security. Seven of the nine roles are based remotely in the United States, while two roles are based in Paris, France, and one is located onsite in New York.

The commercial hiring push focuses on partner acquisition and growth. Nabla is seeking a Growth Marketing Director alongside mid-market sales and partnership directors. On the technical and operations side, the company is hiring a Senior Application Security Engineer in Paris to harden platform infrastructure, alongside product management roles dedicated to software workflows.

Salaries for open US roles range between $120,000 and $250,000 per year, with the highest compensation offered for executive marketing leadership.

See all open roles at Nabla Bio