playground-global
(2)
Insamo
Insamo is a Berkeley-based biotechnology company spun out of UC Berkeley that is building membrane-permeable, orally available macrocyclic peptides with antibody-like binding affinity. By pairing machine-learning-driven molecular design with ultra-high-throughput molecular biology and parallel synthetic chemistry, Insamo runs automated design-synthesize-test cycles that generate trillions of proprietary data points - aiming to turn today's injected biologics into pills and to hit drug targets long considered undruggable. The company launched publicly in February 2024 with a $12M seed round led by Playground Global, venBio, and Merck's MRL Ventures Fund.
Amber Bio
Amber Bio is a biotechnology startup pioneering a new RNA writing platform that performs multi-kilobase edits, aiming to treat thousands of disease-causing mutations with a single product. Founded in 2021 by Jacob Borrajo and Basem Al-Shayeb out of the Broad Institute and UC Berkeley, the company launched in August 2023 with a $26M seed round co-led by Playground Global and Andreessen Horowitz Bio + Health.