By Lynda Kiernan
At its second annual Ferment meeting, Boston-based biotech giant Ginkgo Bioworks announced the launch of Ferment Consortium, a $350 million private investment vehicle supported by capital commitments from existing Ginkgo investors including Viking Global Investors, General Atlantic, and Cascade Investment, through which Ginkgo can finance potentially transformative spinout companies.
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.”
Ginkgo has already spun off two successful companies:
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.
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.
Now with Ferment Consortium, Ginkgo will be better able to replicate these successes, with each Ferment portfolio company being able to launch with full access to Ginkgo’s platform of cell programming, along with the experience and expertise of cutting edge strategic partners.
“We’re seeing growing demand from large, sophisticated strategic players across multi-billion dollar industries who realize that synthetic biology will transform their fields,” said Kelly.
“These incumbents want to be part of shaping that disruption and owning a stake in it rather than watching it unfold. The Ferment Consortium will catalyze these formations and help fund companies with the speed and strength to transform markets using synthetic biology.”
The news of this launch comes less than a month after Ginkgo Bioworks closed on a $290 million Series E, which brought the company’s total funding to-date to $719 million, and its valuation to $4 billion.
With the addition of Ferment Consortium and in partnership with market leaders, Ginkgo will focus on creating spinouts in mature industries in which synthetic biology has the potential to have a profound impact, but has been underutilized. Ginkgo and Ferment Consortium will create a position from which companies can solve global challenges, contribute market intelligence and critical channel access, while strategic partners will partner with Ferment Consortium to support these new ventures with keystone investments.
– 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