South African-born billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong backs $50 million biotech round

South African-born billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong's Nant Capital has co-led a $50 million investment in Prolific Machines, a California biotech company that uses light to control how cells produce drugs, and the surgeon-turned-entrepreneur is joining the startup's board.

Prolific Machines said on Wednesday that it had completed the initial closing of a $50 million Series B2 round led by Nant Capital and Atoms & Bits, a growth-stage fund. The round takes the Emeryville, California-based company's total funding past $100 million, according to a statement distributed through PR Newswire.

Existing investors Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Mayfield, SOSV and Ki Tua Fund, the venture arm of New Zealand dairy group Fonterra, also took part.

Soon-Shiong, the founder of NantWorks, and James Stewart of Level One Fund and Atoms & Bits have joined Prolific's board. The company and NantWorks also agreed to apply Prolific's technology to biologic drug programs across the NantWorks portfolio of health and life sciences companies.

"Prolific Machines is the most exciting advancement I have seen in biopharma manufacturing in decades," Soon-Shiong said in the statement. "Deniz and his team have built the control system that has long been missing from making medicines in living cells."

Using light to make medicines

Prolific was founded in 2020 by Chief Executive Officer Deniz Kent, Chief Technology Officer Max Huisman and Declan Jones, according to SynBioBeta, which reported on the company's earlier $55 million Series B in 2024. That round was led by Ki Tua Fund.

The company works in optogenetics, a field in which cells are engineered to respond to light. It combines light-sensitive cell lines with plug-in lighting systems for standard bioreactors and artificial intelligence software that adjusts production, with the aim of giving drugmakers tighter control over how much protein their cells produce.

Prolific said it will use the new money to scale its platform, expand programs with several of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies and other biotech firms, and hire more staff. It is working on biologics, biosimilars and viral vectors, and plans early work on tissue and organ fabrication.

"Our biggest issue now is having too much demand and this funding round changes that," Kent said. "We will be rapidly scaling the business over the next 12 months."

A second manufacturing bet in a week

The Prolific deal is Soon-Shiong's second investment in drug-manufacturing technology this month. On Oct. 6, NantWorks led a $75 million Series B round in Multiply Labs, a company that builds robotic systems to automate the production of cell and gene therapies. Fierce Pharma reported both deals together on Wednesday.

Soon-Shiong was born in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, in South Africa's Eastern Cape province, and trained as a doctor before moving to North America. He built his fortune in biotechnology. He developed the cancer drug Abraxane and sold Abraxis BioScience, the company behind it, to Celgene in 2010 in a cash-and-stock deal valued at about $2.9 billion.

He is executive chairman of Nasdaq-listed ImmunityBio, which develops cancer immunotherapies, and owns the Los Angeles Times, which his Nant Capital bought in 2018. He is also a minority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.

Through NantWorks and Nant Capital, Soon-Shiong has backed a range of companies in health care, biotechnology and technology, and he has often taken board seats at the companies he funds.