Prolific Machines, an Emeryville, California-based biotechnology company developing optogenetics-enabled biomanufacturing technology, has raised an initial $50 million in a Series B2 financing led by venture capital firms Atoms & Bits and Nant Capital. The funding brings the company’s total funding to more than $100 million.

Prolific Machines plans to use the capital to expand its platform across programs with pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, increase staffing, and advance technology development and scale-up. Planned applications include biologics, biosimilars, and viral vectors, with early-stage work also planned for tissue and organ fabrication.

The company also entered a strategic collaboration with NantWorks to apply its platform to biologics programs across NantWorks’ health and life sciences portfolio. Patrick Soon-Shiong, founder of NantWorks, and James Stewart, founder of Atoms & Bits, have joined Prolific’s board of directors.

Prolific’s platform uses light to control gene expression in production cells, allowing manufacturers to regulate biological processes during production. The company is developing the technology to improve control over protein expression and manufacturing productivity.

In May 2026, Prolific reported achieving a monoclonal antibody titer of 21 grams per liter in a 15-day intensified fed-batch Chinese hamster ovary cell run. The company said the result exceeded typical fed-batch benchmarks and demonstrated the platform’s potential to increase productivity. Prolific set a target of 25 g/L by the end of 2026.