By Lynda Kiernan

Boston-based biotech giant Ginkgo Bioworks has raised a $290 million Series E, bringing the company’s total funding to $719 million, and its valuation to $4 billion. 

The round was backed by all of the company’s major existing investors, along with new investors, funds, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates. The capital raised from this diverse group of backers will be dedicated to funding a wider reach for Ginkgo’s cell programming platform, and to foster greater access to the expertise, scale, resources, and technology of its platform.

This round follows upon a $275 million Series D secured by the company in Q4 2017 from Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund, Bill Gates, Viking Global, Cascade Investment, and General Atlantic, which was earmarked for construction of Ginkgo’s Bioworks3 production site, and which catapulted the company into ‘unicorn’ status with a valuation exceeding $1 billion. 

Founded in 2008, and launched through Y Combinator, Ginkgo Bioworks originally operated on $15 million in federal defense funding. Over the following years, the company developed a method of creating custom microbes using robots that was more efficient and less costly compared to the same process being conducted by human scientists, and that enabled the company“to grow products instead of manufacturing them”.

“Cells are programmable similar to computers because they run on digital code in the form of DNA,” said Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. “We believe Ginkgo has the best compiler and debugger for writing genetic code and we use it to program cells for customers in a range of industries.”

Growth in Partnerships

As the vast nascent potential for synthetic biology becomes more apparent, Ginkgo Bioworks has experienced dynamic growth and evolution over the past few years across a range of industries, including agriculture.

In September 2018 Ginkgo and Cronos Group, a diversified and vertically integrated cannabis group, announced a landmark partnership for the production of a full spectrum of cultured cannabinoids. 

“Legal cannabis is a multibillion-dollar industry with no signs of slowing down, but providers will need to innovate to keep up with demand for better products, including those taking advantage of rare and difficult to extract cannabinoids,” said Kelly at the time. “Engineering strains of yeast that can produce these cannabinoids via fermentation is a perfect fit for our organism design platform…”

More recently, in March of this year, Ginkgo launched Motif Ingredients, a food tech startup focused on the development of next-generation alternative proteins and other ingredients for global food companies. At the time, Motif was funded by a $90 million Series A that included Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a leading investment fund focused on climate issues, and some of the world’s top billionaires including Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, and Vinod Khosla. Other investors include two of the biggest global food companies -Louis Dreyfus Company and Fonterra – and Viking Global Ventures. 

By August of this year, Motif Ingredients rebranded under the new name Motif FoodWorks, and raised an additional $27.5 million in funding from General Atlantic and CPT Capital. 

Another major partnership is Joyn Bio – a partnership founded in 2017 by Ginkgo Bioworks and Bayer with the goal of applying advanced techniques in synthetic biology to reduce the environmental impacts of agricultural production. Funded by a $100 million Series A provided by both parent companies, Joyn Bio’s first effort in this arena was focused on improving microbes’ ability to provide cereal crops their nitrogen requirements, offering major benefits for sustainable agriculture by reducing the need for additional chemical fertilizers.

This July, at Global AgInvesting AgTech Nexus USA in Chicago, Joyn Bio announced a $75 million partnership with NewLeaf Symbiotics that will bring innovation and sustainability to modern agriculture with a new class of microbes that benefit crop health and protection.

“Partnering with NewLeaf’s team of experts and technology is game-changing for Joyn Bio and our efforts to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in the agriculture industry,” said Mike Miille, CEO, Joyn Bio. “Our team at Joyn will now be better equipped to take these microbes to the next level of performance and ultimately into the field.”

“The challenges farmers face daily require bold and novel solutions, and the community is eager for the next wave of agriculture innovation – and microbes are powerful engines for helping crops and farming businesses thrive,” said Tom Laurita, CEO and co-founder of NewLeaf Symbiotics. “This collaboration with Joyn is a significant milestone for us and can lead to revolutionary advancements in sustainable agriculture.”

 

– Lynda Kiernan is Editor with GAI Media and daily contributor to GAI News. If you would like to submit a contribution for consideration, please contact Ms. Kiernan at lkiernan@globalaginvesting.com.