Weston Kightlinger

Weston Kightlinger is the CEO and co-founder of Ridge Bio (Ridge Biotechnologies), a Palo Alto biotech that left stealth in September 2025 with $25 million in seed funding to design precision enzymes and targeted therapeutics by pairing machine learning with massive cell-free laboratory datasets. A Northwestern-trained scientist with a background in cell-free protein synthesis and protein glycosylation, he turned a decade of bench work into a company whose advisory board reads like a who's-who of chemical biology, including Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi.