Delray Beach, Fla. – October 05, 2026 -- The global AI in Protein Engineering market will climb to USD 3.82 billion by 2031 from USD 1.44 billion in 2026, a 21.6% compound annual growth rate, according to a new forecast from MarketsandMarkets.
North America holds 48.6% market share as software platforms dominate spending
North America led the market with a 48.6% share in 2025. Software and platforms accounted for 75.4% of revenue the same year, as pharmaceutical and biotech firms prioritized AI-driven design tools over services. Within protein types, miniproteins are set to post the fastest growth at 23.7% CAGR through 2031.
Generative AI tools lead adoption for de novo protein and antibody design
Generative AI captured the largest share of AI-tool spending in 2025, driven by use in de novo protein design, antibody optimization, and enzyme engineering. Next-generation biologics is projected as the fastest-growing application segment, as drugmakers use protein language models to navigate large sequence spaces and shorten design-build-test cycles.
Asia Pacific emerges as fastest-growing region on national R&D spending surges
Asia Pacific is forecast to be the fastest-growing regional market. China spent roughly RMB 3.63 trillion (USD 500 billion) on R&D in 2024, up 8.9% year-over-year, with basic research spending rising 10.7%. India's bioeconomy reached USD 165.7 billion in 2024, more than 16 times its 2014 level, backed by the government's BioE3 initiative. Japan recorded JPY 22.05 trillion in total R&D expenditure in fiscal 2023, including JPY 1.54 trillion in pharmaceutical R&D, up 7.6%.
AI Proteins, Latent Labs, EvolutionaryScale secure fresh funding for protein design platforms
Investment activity is accelerating. EvolutionaryScale raised USD 142 million in 2024 to build protein-generating AI models. Latent Labs secured USD 50 million in February 2025 for generative protein-design models. AI Proteins closed a USD 41.5 million Series A round in November 2025 to advance de novo miniprotein therapeutics. Pharmaceutical-industry dealmaking also intensified, with 120 AI-based target and drug discovery deals recorded in 2025 -- 23% of the 513 such deals tracked since 2017 -- carrying a combined potential value of USD 29.7 billion and nearly USD 800 million committed upfront.
Benchling survey finds scaling AI remains the industry's biggest hurdle
A 2025 Benchling survey of roughly 100 biotech and pharma organizations found 55% allocate at least 11% of R&D technology budgets to AI, and 87% report AI agents embedded in workflows or products. Yet only 22% have successfully scaled AI deployments, and just 9% report significant returns. Recursion reported producing approximately 330 compounds per program over 17 months, versus an industry average of more than 2,500 compounds over 42 months, illustrating the productivity gap AI aims to close. Despite the constraints, 88% of surveyed organizations plan to increase cloud and infrastructure investment, with 86% raising data-platform spending and 84% boosting AI-platform budgets.
Schrödinger, NVIDIA, Isomorphic Labs named among market's leading players
MarketsandMarkets identifies Schrödinger, XtalPi, Dassault Systèmes, NVIDIA, Generate:Biomedicines, Absci, Insilico Medicine, and Isomorphic Labs as leading companies shaping the AI protein engineering landscape.