This Entrepreneur Raised $90 Million To Build A Technology That Uses Light For Therapeutic and Nutritional Proteins And Gene Therapy

In the world of biotech, where cutting-edge research often remains locked within academic institutions, Deniz Kent, Ph.D., is defying convention. He is the co-founder and CEO of Prolific Machines, a company he created on the radical idea of controlling biology with light.

Deniz transformed this innovation into a multi-million-dollar enterprise poised to revolutionize pharmaceutical manufacturing. This engrossing interview traces his journey from his immigrant roots to raising over $90M in funding, highlighting his vision, adaptability, and bold execution.

Deniz talks about pivoting from growing meat to manufacturing drugs with light. He also reveals his experiences with building, scaling, and financing his company with some of the top investors.

Listen to the full podcast episode and review the transcript here.

From London to the Lab: A Nomadic Childhood and Early Curiosity

Born to Turkish immigrants, Deniz spent his childhood traveling between London and Turkey, instilling in him a worldview unconstrained by borders.

“I didn’t really belong anywhere,” he reflects, describing how this upbringing shaped his rejection of rigid nationalism and patriotism and fueled his adaptability. Considering that many people don’t get on a plane before their 40s and 50s, travel opened up a completely different lens.

Despite the instability, one constant emerged: a deep respect for hard work. “In Turkey, it’s normal to work 12-hour days, six days a week,” Deniz notes. “That perspective taught me gratitude. Even on my worst days, I remind myself how privileged I am.”

Living in a country with fewer opportunities and more competition, Deniz developed a healthy appreciation for how hard life can be for some people.

Falling in Love with Science (Not the Textbook Kind)

Though Deniz excelled in science early on, it wasn’t until he stepped into a lab that the subject came alive. “Science isn’t just in textbooks. It’s something we co-create,” he says. He didn’t believe in accepting information in textbooks as facts.

This epiphany led Deniz to study at King’s College London, where he learned cellular and molecular medicine, biomedical, and translational science. Later, he did graduate research in immunology, working on engineering T-cells, a type of immune cell, to infiltrate tumors.

Deniz learned that tumors can effectively suppress T-cell response, which triggered research into their mechanism and whether there are any drug-responsive targets there. Soon, he was studying how to program or reprogram the immune system.

This project caught the attention of pharmaceutical giant GSK, which had invented salbutamol, a blockbuster drug delivered through inhalers. Deniz collaborated with the company on a bispecific antibody-based, single-dose asthma cure. It was his first real independent research project.

That experience launched Deniz into doing his master’s and later a Ph.D. He was ready to run his own academic lab, but realized that the available tools for researching biology weren’t capable enough. He needed better tools.

The Lightbulb Moment: Inventing a New Way to Build Biology

That’s how Deniz decided to solve the problem, not just for himself but also for other people working in the space. This personal research bottleneck would become the inflection point that birthed Prolific Machines, the world’s first optogenetic biomanufacturing company.

Instead of accepting the lack of tools as a constraint, Deniz reimagined the solution–light. He realized that light was the best way to control biology and eventually, all biomanufacturing would become optogenetic.

This wasn’t science fiction. The realization sparked the founding of Prolific Machines, the first company to commercialize optogenetic biomanufacturing.

From Lab Coats to Boardrooms: Making the Leap to Entrepreneurship

Transitioning from academic researcher to entrepreneur wasn’t straightforward. Deniz saw a problem and the frustration from dealing with it. Initially, he hoped to partner with an established company to develop his idea, but was met with inertia.

A friend’s advice changed everything: “If you want this to exist in the world, you’ll have to build it yourself.” And so, Deniz did, despite it clearly being outside of that path you might see from anyone doing their Ph.D. He hadn’t expected to be an entrepreneur.

What started as academic frustration became a venture-backed startup. Prolific Machines is now preparing to offer precision biologics manufacturing services to asset owners who want to make their conventional and difficult-to-produce therapeutic proteins cheaper, faster, and more reliably.

In some cases, therapeutic asset owners have already tried to make their therapeutic proteins with other vendors. They have found that those vendors either cannot make them at all or cannot make them at the concentrations required for profitability.

Prolific helps asset owners since the problem stems from a lack of control in the manufacturing process. This, in turn, leads to the inability to make many of these drugs.

As Deniz explains, if you have cells under the control of light, you have the highest degree of control over them, over both the time and space axes, at the lowest possible cost.

This unlocks several pharmaceutical products that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, as well as unlocking products across several different categories.

Transitioning from Growing Meat with Light to Drugs with Light

Explaining the transition from growing meat with light to drugs with light, Deniz explains that he uses optogenetics, a field that uses light-sensitive proteins to control cellular functions.

Using light-sensitive proteins that they tether to various targets, they can toggle specific proteins on or off. Although meat and drugs are different in terms of products, they are similar in terms of technology. The biological systems are identical between cultured meat and drugs.

The second part of Prolific’s work is the hardware. They build plug-and-play illuminators with existing bioreactor infrastructure and laser-based patterning devices. Again, these techniques are the same for drugs, meat, and other biological processes.

The third aspect is software. Prolific has algorithms that learn how to speak biology by experimenting with different light patterns and get more efficient at controlling cells with light over time. Thus, the science is similar, regardless of what you want to make with the cells.

Pivoting the Business: From Cultured Meat to Therapeutic Proteins

Deniz reveals that Prolific Machines initially started working on cultured meat. He considers cultured meat inevitable, considering the world’s population, the amount of available resources, and the growing demand for more meat.

Growing meat with light will be the best way to plug the gap. That being said, meat is not very expensive compared to other things you can make with biology. It made more sense to start with the most expensive thing that can be made with biology, which is therapeutic proteins.

These proteins can sell for thousands of dollars per milligram. relative to meat. Even Wagyu, the most expensive meat they make, sells for a dollar a gram. At scale, it can be made at around $4.7 per kilogram. Even then, the cost vastly differs between meat and a therapeutic protein.

That’s when Deniz decided to start with the most expensive biological product and work their way down the cost curve rather than the other way around. He also realized that sales and business cycles significantly differed between pharma and meat.

The second factor that influenced the decision to pivot was that the old protein winter was kicking in from an investment landscape perspective. Deniz had to pivot their commercial strategy.

Raising Funding for Prolific Machines

Deniz reveals that they have raised $90M for Prolific. Prolific Machines broke records at IndieBio, raising a seed round just eight days into the world’s leading biotech accelerator program, led by Mayfield. It became the fastest seed round any company has raised.

Within six months, Prolific closed a Series A with Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by Bill Gates. Once again, it broke the record for the fastest series A. Their Series B brought in the CVC of the Fonterra Co-operative Group, New Zealand, one of the largest dairy conglomerates in the world.

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Lessons From the Journey

For aspiring founders, Deniz offers a simple but powerful lesson: fundraise before you need to. “When you raise with leverage, you get better terms, better investors, and better outcomes. Don’t wait until you’re desperate. Don’t fundraise from a position of weakness.”

Another lesson, especially for fellow people-pleasers, hits closer to the heart: “Stop worrying about being liked. You have to make hard decisions, and not everyone will support you. That’s the job.”

Through executive coaching, Deniz has learned to prioritize effectiveness over approval, an evolution he believes is essential for any founder. The best CEOs are not the ones most liked because they need to make decisions that not everyone agrees with.

That includes investors, partners, and employees. But it’s still the right thing to do from a fiduciary perspective.

The Vision: A New Era of Biomanufacturing

Deniz Kent envisions a future where all biomanufacturing becomes optogenetic. Six years ago, that was an extremely contrarian position. However, thanks to the data they are generating, it’s becoming less contrarian.

The reasons are compelling:

• Light is cheap: It is the cheapest input into cells since LEDs and electricity are globally commoditized by consumer electronics and civilization. As a result, Prolific has the cheapest biomanufacturing ever.
• Light is precise. It offers unmatched spatial and temporal control, and it can be precisely controlled where and when it is shined. Unlike traditional molecular inputs into biology, light can also be instantly tuned to any desired level.
• Light is programmable. Algorithms can control cells dynamically in real time by toggling them on and off to make things. Light does not result in random patterns of molecules that are hard to control. But it has the specificity associated with a specific type of tissue or organ.

“This gives us the lowest possible costs and the highest possible control, the two levers that will define the future of biomanufacturing,” Deniz explains. From drug manufacturing to climate applications, the platform is positioned to serve multi-trillion-dollar industries.

Caution and Conviction: The Dual Edge of Innovation

With great power comes great responsibility, and Deniz is candid about his concerns. He worries that optogenetics, like many powerful technologies, could be misused if it falls into the wrong hands.

Deniz also fears that humanity’s reactive mindset may delay progress on climate-driven innovations like cultured meat. “By the time we get serious, it may already be too late to avoid the worst human and animal suffering,” he warns. Humans need to be more proactive, not reactive.

What’s Next?

Deniz Kent isn’t slowing down. In addition to scaling Prolific Machines, he’s working on a novel, starting a Substack to share long-form essays, and continuing to push forward what’s possible in biotechnology.

For therapeutic asset owners looking to manufacture more efficiently, he’s clear: “Reach out to us at prolific-machines.com. We can help.”

Deniz Kent is more than a scientist-turned-founder. He’s a visionary building a new infrastructure layer for biology, using light as both a scalpel and software. If his vision comes true, we won’t just manufacture drugs more efficiently—we’ll usher in a new era of programmable biology.

And that’s a future worth watching.

Listen to the full podcast episode to know more, including:

• Deniz Kent transitioned from academic research to entrepreneurship by founding Prolific Machines, driven by a desire to solve limitations in biological control tools.
• Prolific Machines uses optogenetics—controlling cells with light—to revolutionize biomanufacturing with higher precision and lower costs.
• Due to stronger economics and market demand, the company pivoted from growing cultured meat to manufacturing therapeutic proteins.
• Deniz has raised over $90M from top investors, including IndieBio, Mayfield, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and Fonterra.
• He emphasizes raising capital when you don’t need it, to maximize leverage and terms.
• His immigrant background instilled resilience and a strong work ethic that shaped his entrepreneurial mindset.
• Deniz believes all biomanufacturing will become optogenetic due to light’s unmatched control and cost efficiency.

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