April 1, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Continental Grain’s venture arm Conti Ventures has led a $33 million Series B for protein design company Arzeda. Others who participated in the round include Lewis & Clark Agrifood, Bunge Ventures, and Circulate Capital, among others. Series A investors OS Fund, Casdin Capital, UMI, and Bioeconomy Capital also returned to participate in the company’s Series B. 

Proteins are building blocks responsible for the majority of functions carried out by living things. Arzeda stated that its novel combination of computational protein design and state-of-the-art screening is “a radical change over what’s possible with traditional protein engineering” to deliver proteins that are “unconstrained by evolution”.

Using digital biology techniques, Arzeda applies the latest in digital biology to discover and design new enzymes. Up until now, science has only just begun to understand the potential benefits that enzymes – key ingredients in foods, consumer products, materials, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals -hold.

Arzeda’s platform develops enzymes able to replace ingredients that have a high environmental footprint, explained the company – optimizing naturally occurring enzymes and designing new, diverse versions of enzymes with novel benefits that would otherwise not have been possible.

“We see tremendous opportunity to leverage Arzeda’s leading technology, which combines biology with cloud computing and AI, to bring impactful novel enzymes to market across a number of industries,” said Brian Loeb, Conti Ventures.

This technology has wide-reaching implications through its ability to solve challenges being faced in the consumer, industrial, and environmental spaces. With a focus on being a leading innovator in food, personal, and homecare products, Arzeda’s technology has applications within agriculture, sustainable materials and chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and diagnostics.

Within the agricultural sphere, Arzeda’s platform has the power to advance sustainable practices, and improve plant health, yields, and crop protection, whether through the designing of pesticidal peptides and biochemicals, or engineering the crops themselves and their microbiomes. 

Loeb commented, “At Conti Ventures we are looking to drive forward cutting-edge technology that will define the future of food and agriculture. We are impressed with Arzeda’s existing enzyme portfolio and its commercial potential, alongside Arzeda’s pipeline of innovation and ability to partner with industry. This is a technology that makes the future bright.”

As it progresses, the company has been working with numerous global-scaled players to solve problems – both everyday and societal in scope – such as the need for sustainably produced food ingredients. And with the capital from this round, Arzeda will be able to further its product portfolio development and accelerate the commercialization of its key enzyme portfolio.

“Through key partnerships with leading companies such as Unilever and BP, we have achieved significant milestones in developing our portfolio of products. We also have a robust pipeline of innovation,” said Alexandre Zanghellini, Ph.D., CEO, Arzeda.

“With this funding, we will move our existing portfolio towards commercialization and increase our technology platform’s ability to further drive our mission of designing and manufacturing new proteins. This will improve health and sustainability and deliver vital innovation needed to support a more circular economy.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com. 

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