March 19, 2024

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

We are still only just beginning to understand the potential that synthetic biology holds for the future of humanity and global food production systems. However, Tierra Biosciences (Tierra), the company that developed the world’s first predictive AI-guided, cell-free technology with the power to enable high-throughput, on-demand, custom protein synthesis, is a bit closer after announcing it has closed on $11.4 million in Series A funding led by Material Impact. 

Also participating in the round were new and existing investors Prosus Ventures, In-Q-Tel (IQT), Hillspire, Freeflow Ventures, Creative Ventures, and Social Capital.

Proteins are essential molecules that are indispensable to life. Their diverse structures and functions make them fundamental building blocks of living organisms and integral components of the world’s ecosystems. Stemming from modest amino acid building blocks and diverse in both structure and function, proteins are involved in nearly every biological process on Earth making them critical to sustaining life in all its forms.

Tierra’s mission is grounded in democratizing access to proteins and driving meaningful advancement in critical areas including global food security, environmental sustainability, and human health. 

Exploring beyond the confines of nature, the company deploys the latest advances in AI language models and utilizes its proprietary data to engineer and produce transformative proteins that push the boundaries of possibility. 

“Tierra’s cutting-edge platform, powered by advanced cell-free technology, is compelling in its ability to play a key role in building critical bio-infrastructure. We believe the result will be a transformative acceleration of protein design-build-test-learn cycles within the industry,” said Chenny Zhang, principal, investments, IQT.

When considering the possibilities of how synthetic biology can advance global food systems, the report, Synthetic biology for future food: Research progress and future directions, published in June 2021, noted:

“Overall, [a] synthetic biology driven food industry has the potential to address the challenges of sustainable food supply in the future…. First, synthetic biology can improve the traditional food production and manufacturing. Second, synthetic biology can improve food nutrition or add new functionalities. Third, synthetic biology can transform the traditional fermentation food production style by the use of engineered microbial communities.”

With so much power to transform, the global cell-free protein expression market is forecast to grow from a value of US$232 million in 2022 to US$507.85 million by 2032, reflecting a CAGR of 8.2 percent over the time period of 2023-2032, according to Precedence Research. 

Tierra has already established relationships with major agricultural, pharmaceutical, and industrial organizations, and with the capital secured through this round, has stated it will now expand its reach and extend its innovative capabilities to a broader array of customers and partners. 

“Traditional protein engineering using living cells is slow, inefficient, and data poor,” said Michael Nemzek, CEO, Tierra. “Tierra’s cell-free protein production platform will change the game, powering our customers’ discovery efforts with rapid access to large numbers of discrete custom proteins for screening and discovery, plus fast yield scale-up for downstream development and pilot work.”

The funding also will play a pivotal role in advancing the company’s predictive AI, leveraging the large and growing closed-loop synthesis parameter data lake generated from its centralized manufacturing of thousands of proteins. 

“Tierra’s platform propels innovation in the bioeconomy by eliminating bottlenecks in protein discovery and manufacturing,” stated Corinna Chen, partner, Material Impact. “We’re excited to partner with them as they fuse high-throughput manufacturing with artificial intelligence, promising not only to reshape the landscape of protein synthesis but also to revolutionize entire industries.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief 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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