Nautilus Eyes A Capital Raise By Mid-2027 As CEO Pitches Proteoforms, Not Gene Count, As The Key To Biology
The protein-analysis company posted $0.2 million of third-quarter revenue and a $15.6 million net loss, with cash lasting into early 2028.
Nautilus Biotechnology, which is building a platform to measure proteins, said on its third-quarter earnings call Tuesday that it is exploring a fundraising between now and mid-2027, while CEO Sujal Patel argued that human complexity lives in the many forms each protein takes, not in gene count. Cash ended the quarter at $114.3 million, down from $129.2 million at the end of the second quarter.
Cash, losses and a raise
Chief Financial Officer Anna Mowry said on the call that revenue was $0.2 million in the third quarter, from Michael J. Fox Foundation grant work and early access services. Net loss was $15.6 million, or 12 cents a share, against $13.6 million, or 11 cents, a year earlier.
Operating expenses were $16.9 million, up about 10% from $15.5 million. Research and development rose about 6% to $10.2 million, and selling, general and administrative costs rose about 15% to $6.8 million. Cash use in the quarter was about $14.9 million, and Mowry said the current plan supports a runway into the first quarter of 2028.
The company is exploring a raise to expand its proteoform assay portfolio, extend the platform and build a commercial team, Mowry said, and is "actively evaluating the right path." She said 2026 revenue should now exceed the prior outlook of about $0.5 million, with fourth-quarter revenue growing from the third quarter even without ARPA-H grant work.
The banana argument
Patel said a banana has almost 40,000 protein-coding genes, while humans have about 20,000, half as many. Early in the Human Genome Project, he said, scientists expected well over 100,000. His point: complexity comes from the layer above the genome, where one gene can yield many proteoforms through splicing, sequence variation and modifications made after the protein is built.
He said competing mass spectrometry and affinity methods disagree with each other, with variation of 20%, 30%, even 40%, so the training data frontier AI models need does not yet exist. Nautilus says its tau assay reached a median coefficient of variation, a measure of variability, of 5.5%. Three oncology assays came in at 8.8% for AKT1, 3.6% for EGFR and 6.6% for P53, below the company's 10% target and, Patel said, far better than industry norms closer to 25%.
The company has effectively tripled the people and resources on proteoform work and aims for 20 proteoform assays by the middle of 2028, Patel said.
Voyager timeline
Nautilus sells to biopharma and research customers through early access services and plans to later sell its Voyager platform. Patel said the company expects to open pre-orders in early 2027 and begin instrument shipments in mid-2027, with a first beta unit placed this year. The AKT1 assay is due to enter early access in late 2026.
The company also signed on to the ARPA-H-funded SEEDS consortium, from which it expects up to $6 million over four years.
Patel said 2027 is the year Nautilus lays the foundation, with scaling to follow in 2028.
Sources
- Nautilus Biotechnology Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript — benzinga.com
- Nautilus Biotechnology Reports Third Quarter 2026 Financial — globenewswire.com
- Nautilus to Measure Proteoforms Driving Alzheimer’s Disease — globenewswire.com
