XtalPi Inc. (“XtalPi Holdings Limited,” XTALPI-P, 2228.HK) and Shanghai CyberplantX Biotech Co., Ltd. (“CyberplantX”) have signed a collaboration agreement to combine CyberplantX’s plant genomic variation and phenotype database with XtalPi’s advanced AI protein design platform. Together, they aim to create an “Intelligent Evolution Engine” for plants, enabling rapid, targeted breeding of next-generation super crops that are safe, resilient, green, and cost-effective to address escalating climate change challenges. This partnership seeks to transform plant science research from biotechnology (BioTech) to tech-driven biology (TechBio), paving new paths for high-quality agricultural development in China and globally while advancing the commercialization of this technology.
Climate Change Threatens Global Food Security and Agricultural Breeding
In 2024, the global daily average temperature hit a record high of 17.09°C, with 2023’s average temperature 1.45°C warmer than pre-industrial levels (1850-1900), leading to increasingly frequent extreme weather and disasters. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, agricultural losses from disasters between 1992 and 2021 totaled $3.8 trillion globally, averaging $123 billion annually—about 5% of global agricultural output.
Major crops, domesticated over 10,000 years, urgently need rapid “directed evolution” to develop resilient, high-yield varieties to adapt to accelerated climate change, enhance national food security, and optimize land use. This is critical for addressing global food security and market supply challenges.
China, a historic agricultural powerhouse, has made significant strides in breeding major crops like rice and corn through conventional methods like hybridization. However, these methods are limited by natural growth cycles, high trial-and-error costs, and diminishing genetic gains, making innovation increasingly challenging. In transgenic breeding, most approved traits in China stem from insect- or herbicide-resistant proteins discovered abroad decades ago, limiting domestic innovation and global competitiveness, akin to generics in pharmaceuticals. Gene editing, while promising, is constrained by incomplete foundational research into complex traits, with current successes limited to simple quality traits like high oleic acid, vitamin C content, or unique flavors, offering limited economic value and downstream appeal.
AI-Driven Directed Breeding: Building the Intelligent Evolution Engine
The discovery of systemin in the 1990s, a key peptide regulating plant systemic defense, opened doors to understanding plants’ remarkable repair and regeneration capabilities. Advances in AI, particularly large language models, have provided new tools to deepen insights into critical functional proteins.
The partnership between XtalPi and CyberplantX aims to achieve breakthroughs in plant stress resistance and directed breeding by developing an intelligent evolution engine for next-generation super crops. Leveraging CyberplantX’s vast dataset from its CyberplantX platform and XtalPi’s AI-driven protein design capabilities, the collaboration will precisely identify regulatory protein signaling factors that trigger tissue repair and organ regeneration post-injury. By designing and optimizing transport proteins, the team aims to significantly enhance plants’ ability to recover from climate stress, pests, diseases, and mechanical damage, enabling the targeted breeding of resilient, renewable crops with lower management costs and higher yields and economic benefits.
With AI, the evolution of key functional proteins bypasses slow, uncertain random mutations, allowing precise design and modification to adapt plants to extreme climate changes. This innovative approach provides new tools and perspectives for plant stress resistance research, advancing agricultural technology to new heights.
Elite Teams Unite to Lead Agricultural Intelligence Transformation
XtalPi has developed two proprietary innovation platforms—AI Peptide R&D and AI Cellular R&D—poised to drive breakthroughs at the intersection of AI and agriculture. The AI Peptide R&D platform integrates AI-driven peptide generation, automated synthesis, and high-throughput screening, covering linear, cyclic (mono-/bicyclic), and non-natural amino acid peptides, significantly boosting R&D efficiency. This platform has been successfully applied to early-stage peptide drug development, health products, and novel cosmetic peptide ingredients, with multiple projects reaching key milestones or entering regulatory phases. Its AI peptide design, combined with one-bead-one-compound (OBOC) combinatorial library screening and mRNA display peptide screening, has earned high recognition globally, establishing a robust, high-barrier peptide R&D ecosystem.
XtalPi’s AI Cellular R&D platform, powered by proprietary deep learning image analysis algorithms, supports the analysis of sugar transport protein capabilities in plant cells, providing scientific and technical foundations for crop improvement. By linking high-throughput cell imaging with AI models, it rapidly evaluates the regulatory effects of design schemes on sugar metabolism pathways. These molecular and cellular platforms enhance regulatory protein signaling for stress resistance, regeneration, and energy conversion, enabling the rapid development of competitive super crops with proprietary IP.
CyberplantX focuses on original innovation in germplasm resources and industrial applications. Its team has pioneered new genes used in global facility horticulture and energy crop breeding and biosynthesis, earning multiple national and municipal science and technology awards. The CyberplantX platform, with its algorithms and extensive breeding resource training sets, including plant genomic variation and phenotype libraries, holds potential for breakthroughs in trait control and crop performance.
Dr. Lai Lipeng, Chief Innovation Officer of XtalPi, stated: “We are honored to collaborate with CyberplantX through our innovative R&D platform, leveraging our expertise in pharmaceuticals and materials to unlock AI’s vast potential in agriculture. By driving protein design and intelligent systems, we aim to create a disruptive paradigm for crop breeding, evolving novel crops suited to current environments to address fundamental challenges in food security, environmental sustainability, and human quality of life, contributing to resilient and sustainable global food systems.”
Zhang Yan, Founder of CyberplantX, added: “AI and protein design offer new pathways for super crop development. Our ongoing commercial and R&D collaborations with XtalPi include optimizing transport proteins to enhance photosynthetic and energy efficiency and designing next-generation stress-resistant, renewable crops from scratch.”
About CyberplantX
CyberplantX is an innovative plant science company driven by value chain needs, integrating life sciences and AI to address major scientific challenges in crop sugar accumulation, transport, and unloading. Its original gene discoveries fuel new growth markets in global bio-agriculture, applied to facility horticulture and energy crop breeding and biosynthesis. The core team has earned one National Science and Technology Progress Second Prize, one National First Prize nomination, and two Beijing Science and Technology Progress First Prizes.
About XtalPi Innovation Center
The XtalPi Innovation Center leverages XtalPi’s expertise in AI, scientific computing, and automation to drive industry breakthroughs through integrated computational and experimental technologies. It advances AI and automation applications in life sciences, biomaterials, agriculture, and energy, fostering fundamental science exploration and applied technology advancements to accelerate industry-academia commercialization and create value for industry and society.
