Jeff Bezos’s Family Office Bets on Startup Mapping Human Proteins

Sujal Patel’s data storage company, Isilon Systems, was one of the only tech startups to raise investment funds in the dark winter of Seattle’s early 2000s dot-com bust. Now, he’s announcing he’s raised money for a second company, in biotech this time, in the midst of a global pandemic.

“I think I only perform well under pressure,” Patel said. In his latest venture, called Nautilus Biotechnology, he’s tackling a more difficult problem than computer storage. The goal is to build a device that can map patients’ proteins more rapidly and cheaply, allowing drug developers to use that data to find targeted treatments for diseases like cancer, and let doctors monitor flare-ups of conditions like multiple sclerosis.