Boston Synthetic Bio Startup Ginkgo BioWorks Grabs $45 Million to Take on Bay Area's Zymergen
July 23, 2015
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
BOSTON—Microbe-engineering company Ginkgo BioWorks raised $45 million in Series B funding to expand operations into pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and probiotics, the company announced this morning.
Additionally, Gingko said it plans to hire additional employees and build out Bioworks 2, the next generation of Ginkgo’s robotic Foundry, the company said. Ginkgo Bioworks delivers designer organisms for its customers, using engineered microbes to manufacture cultured ingredients such as flavors, fragrances, cosmetics and sweeteners. Bioworks 1, the company foundry, uses proprietary software and robotics to streamline the design, construction and testing of engineered organisms. The funding will also allow Gingko to expand its footprint to about 18,000 square feet.
Jason Kelly, a co-founder of Gingko Bioworks, said the financing will allow the company to “further expand into real-world products in the nutrition, health and consumer goods sectors as well as add to our world-class team of engineers and designers.”
The Boston Business Journal reported Gingko is looking to nearly double its current employment to more than 40 employees. The company currently employs about 25 people.
The latest round of funding was led by Viking Global, OS Fund, Y Combinator and Felicis Ventures. In March, Gingko raised $9 million in funding from OS Fund, Y Combinator and Felicis Ventures, the Boston Business Journal reported. Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, said Ginkgo is leading the way in synthetic biological manufacturing.
“Synthetic biology is the next frontier for manufacturing, engineering and medicine,” Bryan Johnson, founder of OS Fund, said in a statement.
Gingko’s peer, based in Emeryville, Calif., which was founded in 2013, snagged $44 million in funding in June. Zymergen also uses robotics and proprietary software to “program” microbes to produce high-value commercial molecules.
Gingko Bioworks was founded in 2008 by Tom Knight, a computer scientist, and Jason Kelly, Reshma Shetty, Barry Canton and Austin Che, graduates from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s school of engineering. When the company was first founded, it subsisted off of DARPA funding from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Journal noted. Some of its earliest work with defense funding included looking at manufacturing biofuels out of e. coli bacteria. Additionally, Gingko is developing a chemical to treat antibiotic-resistant germs for the defense department.
In its earliest years, the company created custom-designed microbes using robots, which drastically reduced the costs it would have taken had they been manufactured by people. Ginkgo currently has more than 20 organism design contracts with customers including Fortune 500 companies. These projects include developing organic pesticides with an agriculture company, sweeteners for a major beverage company and rose oils for a French fragrance company, Robertet. The partnership with Robertet allowed the company to manufacture a “cultured rose scent,” which typically takes about 1,000 rose buds to produce for one perfume bottle, the Journal reported. Ginkgo’s cultured rose oil is the first new rose oil on the market in 150 years, Fortune reported.