ALLOX raises $10.5M seed led by Asabys

ALLOX, the biotech spun out of Barcelona’s Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), has closed a $10.5M seed round led by Asabys through its Sabadell Asabys II fund, according to Tech.eu. The deal, announced on 29 October 2026, is among the largest Spanish startup rounds of the month compiled by Startup Riders.

At a glance

• $10.5M seed round led by Asabys (Sabadell Asabys II), with CDTI (SICC Innvierte) and Institut Català de Finances.
• ALLOX maps protein control sites at scale to design small-molecule drugs against hard targets.
• The money will expand its AI platform, advance in-house programmes and grow the team.

What happened

The round is led by Asabys, a Barcelona healthcare investor that already backed ALLOX at its launch as a CRG spin-off. CDTI, via SICC Innvierte, and Institut Català de Finances (ICF) also take part, per Tech.eu. CDTI had previously committed €1.8M to the company, according to its own notice. Alongside the round, ALLOX appoints Morten Graugaard as Independent Chair; he has over two decades in life sciences investment, R&D and business development, with prior roles at Orbis Medicines, Novo Holdings and Lundbeck.

What ALLOX does

Proteins have regions that act as switches: when a molecule binds there, their activity changes even outside the active site. These are allosteric sites. ALLOX aims to find them systematically to design small-molecule drugs against hard targets such as protein-protein interactions and transcription factors.

Its platform combines high-throughput genetics, experimental biology and AI, measuring thousands of mutations in parallel to reveal which regions affect protein folding and interactions, including potential drug-binding pockets (Tech.eu). It builds on multidimensional mutagenesis, which can measure up to one million mutant versions of a protein in a single experiment, according to BIST. Early on, the company focused on proteins relevant to cancer.

Founders and headquarters

ALLOX was founded in Barcelona in 2023 out of Ben Lehner’s lab at the CRG. The founders are Júlia Domingo (CEO), Pablo Baeza (CSO), André Faure (CDO) and Lehner himself, an ICREA professor and Chief Scientific Advisor (BIST, Ellipse/PRBB). In 2025 the company moved into the Barcelona Science Park.

Use of funds

• Expand its AI-powered discovery platform.
• Build proprietary models that predict therapeutic opportunities from large biophysical datasets.
• Advance several programmes towards a pipeline of in-house small-molecule candidates.
• Strengthen the internal team and set up pharma and biotech collaborations.

The company has not disclosed commercial or clinical metrics; it is at the preclinical discovery stage.

Why it matters

AI drug discovery is drawing capital worldwide, but many models run into a shortage of high-quality functional data. ALLOX’s approach is to generate that data experimentally and at scale. For Spain, the deal reinforces Barcelona as a biotech hub, with a clear path from a public research centre to an international seed round, backed by a mix of specialist private capital and public instruments (CDTI, ICF). See the rest of the month’s deals in our roundup of Barcelona startup funding rounds in October 2026.

Frequently asked questions

How much did ALLOX raise?

$10.5M in a seed round led by Asabys, with CDTI (SICC Innvierte) and ICF.

What is an allosteric site?

A region of a protein other than its active site that changes the protein’s function when a molecule binds to it, opening up targets that classic approaches cannot reach.

Where is ALLOX based?

In Barcelona. It was born at the CRG and moved to the Barcelona Science Park in 2025.

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This article is for information only and is not investment advice.