Cyrus Biotechnology announced in June 2024 that it was spinning out its software-and-services business as Levitate Bio. Levitate is a for-profit company wholly owned by the nonprofit Rosetta Commons Foundation. Its goal is to make Rosetta-based and AI-assisted protein modeling available to more commercial users through a web interface, APIs, automation and expert services, while Cyrus continues using the platform in its own drug-development programs.
The arrangement is more than a product rebrand. In an October 2024 clarification, Rosetta Commons said its foundation acquired Cyrus’s Bench product line and created Levitate to operate it commercially. That structure separates Cyrus’s therapeutics work from software sales and is intended to create a revenue stream for the broader Rosetta community.
What happened, and when?
- June 6, 2024: Rosetta Commons announced the Rosetta Commons Foundation and Levitate Bio, describing Levitate as a foundation-owned commercial company for Rosetta-based software and services. Rosetta Commons announcement
- June 11, 2024: Cyrus publicly described the move as a spinout of its software-and-services group. Cyrus announcement
- October 25, 2024: Rosetta Commons gave a more precise account: the foundation acquired the Bench product line from Cyrus and formed Levitate to manage it commercially. Rosetta Commons clarification
Sam DeLuca became Levitate’s chief executive, and Karen Khar was named to lead sales and business development. The announcements frame the transaction as a commercialization and governance strategy, not as evidence that Cyrus is abandoning therapeutics or that the deal was a distress sale.
Four entities that are easy to confuse
| Entity | Role |
|---|---|
| Cyrus Biotechnology | Biotechnology company developing its own biologics and drug programs; it continues to use the software platform internally. |
| Rosetta Commons | The scientific community and software ecosystem surrounding Rosetta, with institutional, academic and licensing relationships. |
| Rosetta Commons Foundation | Nonprofit organization that wholly owns Levitate Bio. |
| Levitate Bio | For-profit company commercializing Bench, Engine/API access and expert services. |
The foundation owns Levitate, not “all of Rosetta” as a single corporate asset. Rosetta’s code, contributors, institutions and licensing arrangements remain broader than the new company.
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Why separate software from Cyrus’s therapeutics business?
A dedicated company can sell modeling tools to biopharma teams that may prefer not to buy software from a company developing competing therapeutic programs. Levitate can focus its product roadmap on interfaces, APIs, workflow automation, support and custom projects, while Cyrus concentrates on its own pipeline.
Rosetta Commons says the nonprofit ownership is designed to let eventual profits support community activities such as research, training, conferences and infrastructure. That is an intended governance and funding mechanism, not a published guarantee of a particular level of reinvestment or financial result.
What Rosetta is—and what Cyrus commercialized
Rosetta is a broad computational suite for modeling and designing biological macromolecules. It supports work such as structure prediction, protein and interface design, docking, stability and mutation analysis, antibody modeling and related tasks. It originated in academic research, including work associated with David Baker’s laboratory, but it is not a single consumer-style application.
Many Rosetta workflows require substantial knowledge of inputs, protocols, computing and result interpretation. Cyrus built commercial products, automation and services around that ecosystem. Bench was intended to expose selected capabilities through a more approachable interface rather than requiring every user to configure the full software stack locally.
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What Levitate offers
Levitate Bench
Bench is a hosted graphical environment for tasks including structure prediction, modeling, design, relaxation, minimization, mutation analysis and epitope prediction. It is aimed at protein scientists who need access to sophisticated workflows without becoming Rosetta software specialists.
Bench documentation describes usage credits, with the cost of an action shown in the product’s Catalog. The reviewed official materials do not provide a public price table.
Levitate Engine
Engine provides programmable access for teams integrating modeling into internal platforms or screening pipelines. Documented API services include:
- AI-based protein folding
- Antibody and nanobody modeling
- Protein and interface design
- Deimmunization
- Disulfide discovery
- Glycosylation prediction
- LigandMPNN-based sequence design
- Epitope scanning
- Viscosity prediction
The current service list is documented in the Levitate API documentation. A July 2025 Rosetta Commons update also described newer Engine tools involving Rosetta Pocket Protocols and Boltz-2. Rosetta Commons update
Custom services
Levitate also offers expert-led work for organizations that need help setting up or executing a project. Examples in its support material include custom-template homology modeling, protein–protein docking, complexes involving ligands, DNA or RNA, deimmunization, cryo-EM map refinement, cyclic-peptide design, noncanonical-residue modeling and consultation. Bench FAQ
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Who is the likely customer?
- Biopharma companies designing or optimizing biologics.
- Small biotechnology teams without in-house Rosetta engineering expertise.
- Computational groups that need an API and repeatable automation rather than manual web jobs.
- Research organizations seeking specialist help for a difficult modeling workflow.
- Protein-engineering, synthetic-biology, agriculture or manufacturing teams with relevant design problems.
The June 2024 announcements identified synthetic biology, agriculture, manufacturing and research as potential expansion areas. Those references indicate intended markets, not verified revenue or established adoption in each sector.
What “versatile” means—and what it does not mean
The platform spans structure prediction, protein and interface design, antibody modeling, sequence design, mutation and stability analysis, binding-site and ligand-related work, and developability-related analyses. That breadth can be useful when a team needs several connected workflows.
It does not turn drug discovery into a one-click process. A computational result is a hypothesis or prioritization signal. Expression, folding, binding, stability, immunogenicity, manufacturability, safety and therapeutic performance still require laboratory and development validation.
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Licensing: public code is not automatically free commercial use
Rosetta documentation distinguishes academic and other noncommercial access from commercial use. A company cannot assume that downloading publicly available code or using a public server grants permission to build a commercial product or run commercial programs without the applicable license.
Cyrus operated as a commercial Rosetta licensee, and the foundation’s relationship with the ecosystem includes licensing activity and royalties to the University of Washington. Commercial users should confirm terms for their specific workflow with Levitate, Rosetta Commons or the relevant licensing office. See the Rosetta licensing FAQ and Rosetta getting-started guidance.
Choosing between hosted tools, services and local Rosetta
| Option | Best fit | Main trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Levitate Bench | Scientists who want a guided, hosted interface. | Pricing and usage economics may require an account or sales discussion; local control is limited. |
| Levitate Engine | Teams automating repeated jobs or integrating modeling into pipelines. | Requires engineering work, API governance and decisions about data handling. |
| Levitate custom services | Small teams facing a technical bottleneck or one-off specialized project. | Builds less internal capability and may cost more per project than an in-house workflow. |
| Local Rosetta | Technically sophisticated teams needing local execution and deep protocol control. | Higher infrastructure, training and licensing burden. |
| Public Rosetta servers | Eligible academic, educational or exploratory noncommercial work. | Not designed for confidential commercial, high-throughput or service-level-reliant programs. |
Questions a buyer should settle before adoption
- Which Rosetta, AI or hybrid protocol and model version will run?
- Can the team reproduce a job from saved inputs, parameters and outputs?
- How long are sequences, structures and results retained, and where are they hosted?
- Can outputs and job configurations be exported for audit or migration?
- What API versioning and uptime commitments apply?
- Which license covers the intended commercial use?
- Will the organization validate designs experimentally, and who owns that downstream work?
What is still unknown?
The public announcements do not establish Levitate’s customer count, revenue, commercial penetration outside biopharma, public pricing or quantitative superiority over newer protein-design platforms. Rosetta Commons has stated that Levitate products are available through annual subscriptions, while Bench documentation describes credits and in-product catalog pricing; no public rate card was visible in the cited official material.
Those gaps matter for procurement. A buyer should request current subscription, credit, service, security and licensing terms rather than infer them from the 2024 launch announcements.
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What the spinout means for Rosetta users
For Cyrus, the move creates clearer separation between therapeutic development and software commercialization. For external users, Levitate is intended to provide a supported commercial route into Rosetta-derived and AI-assisted workflows through a GUI, programmable services or specialist execution. For the Rosetta community, the foundation-owned structure is an experiment in turning commercial demand into sustainable support for an open-science-derived ecosystem.
Whether that model produces meaningful long-term funding, broad adoption and durable technical advantages remains to be demonstrated. The immediate, established change is organizational: Bench-centered commercial operations now sit with Levitate Bio under the Rosetta Commons Foundation, while Cyrus continues its own drug programs.
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