Shares of Nautilus Biotechnology rose by as much as 50% on Thursday morning after a report revealed that Amazon has taken an equity stake in the newly public Seattle-based company.
Nautilus, started in 2016 by Isilon Systems co-founder Sujal Patel and Institute for Systems Biology alum Parag Mallick, is seeking to accelerate biomedical research and transform drug development by developing a new way to analyze the proteome, the set of proteins in a biological sample.
In a June 30 regulatory filing, Amazon disclosed that it owned 1.46 million shares of Nautilus, worth $14.7 million at the time, as first reported Thursday morning by CNBC.
Nautilus shares climbed from $7.51 to $11.30 on the news before trading in the stock was halted temporarily. The stock was at 8.65 as of publication time, up 15% on the day.
Amazon has launched a variety of healthcare initiatives in recent years, although it’s not clear whether or how its Nautilus investment dovetails with its own plans.
Bezos Expeditions, the VC arm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was among the investors in Nautilus prior to the company going public in June through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
