We have the capacity to create everything we need to flourish – from food to medicine to new materials. As we adapt biology with compassion and care, the future is waiting to be written.
Let’s grow a new world together.
Sector Focus
Waste Remediation
Year Founded
2019
What We Saw
The conversation around waste streams—from food, mining, electronics, energy, and other industries—had shifted from ‘how do we mitigate the cost of waste disposal’ to ‘how can we mine and upcycle our waste streams for value?' Chemical and mechanical remediation systems had seemingly plateaued, but biology has great abilities for breaking down molecules, including emerging contaminants, and can scale in ways that physical processing systems cannot.
What We Built
Allonnia is a company focused on using biotechnology for complex waste remediation. We partnered with strategic investors with deep knowledge of engineered remediation systems like Battelle Memorial Institute, and corporate partners with meaningful waste challenges like Canadian oil and gas giant, Suncor. Allonnia is leading the field in biological solutions for waste remediation and is led by CEO, Nicole Richards, formerly of Dupont Water Solutions.
Careers
Sector Focus
Personal Care
Year Founded
2021
What We Saw
Beauty brands struggled to meet new rising consumer values without sacrificing product performance. There was limited innovation in the ingredients they used, and a stark tradeoff between performance and sustainable positioning. Biotechnology was underutilized across the industry, but could help deliver better products to consumers.
What We Built
Arcaea is a company that approaches beauty through a biology first lens. Arcaea brings biotech based ingredients, new product formats, and unique stories to brands and consumers, all rooted in our skin’s relationship to biology. We partnered with entrepreneur and CEO, Jasmina Aganovic, as well as iconic bands (Chanel), innovative category disruptors (Olaplex) and sophisticated suppliers (Givaudan) to fund and build the company.
Careers
Sector Focus
Plant Bioactives
Year Founded
2021
What We Saw
The rise of science backed nutrition for health and wellness, as an alternative to prescription medicines, is a global megatrend. For millennia, we’ve turned to plants and herbs for health and healing, but we’re only beginning to map the universe of these bioactive molecules and micronutrients. However, pure forms of bioactives are hard to access because they’re trapped inside of producer organisms—plants, fungi, and animal cells—and there’s no easy way to isolate them.
What We Built
We built Ayana Bio to integrate computational plant pathway discovery, synthetic biology, and plant cell culturing to uncover new bioactives, and reproduce existing ones, using sustainable production technology. Ayana can find, create, and scale complex molecules and molecular blends that have otherwise been locked away in plant, fungi, and animal cells. Ayana helps meet the global demand for sustainable, standardized health and wellness products.
Careers
Press
FoodDive How Ayana Bio will use science and technology to make more nutritious ingredients
Food Navigator Frank Jaksch joins Ayana Bio as CEO: ‘I’m really excited about being back in the exploration mode’
PRNewswire Ginkgo Bioworks' Ferment Consortium Launches Ayana Bio to Produce Plant and Fungal Bioactives for Herbal Medicines and Nutraceuticals
Sector Focus
Animal Health
Year Founded
2022
What We Saw
Livestock producers and veterinarians were calling for new products to address antibiotic resistance and improve livestock sustainability. Microbiome science can meet these needs, and is rapidly creating breakthroughs in animal health based on the microbial communities in animals and the surrounding environment. Ginkgo’s unique screening and strain engineering capabilities could greatly accelerate a company working on microbiome focused products for animal health.
What We Built
In partnership with Elanco and a team of experts, we developed BiomEdit, a company creating probiotics and microbial medicines for animal health. BiomEdit focuses on the greatest innovation needs in animal health, including medicated feed ingredients, nutritional health, and therapeutics for livestock and pets. The company leverages Ginkgo's cell programming platform to improve the design of probiotics and engineered microbial medicines. BiomEdit is led by CEO, Aaron Schacht, former EVP of Innovation at Elanco.
Sector Focus
Consumer Nutrition
Year Founded
2021
What We Saw
Consumer nutrition brands were lagging in translating powerful advances in microbiome science into meaningful consumer products. People are not getting what they can from their food and, for a variety of reasons, we absorb a fraction of the available nutrients in our diet.
What We Built
We built a consumer probiotics company to leapfrog incumbents and called it Verb Biotics. Verb drives toward deep understanding around the mechanism of action of its probiotics, and using Ginkgo’s high throughput selection and genetic engineering tools, designs a new wave of probiotics with truly meaningful feel the effect nutritional benefits.
Press
We have the capacity to create everything we need to flourish – from food to medicine to new materials. As we adapt biology with compassion and care, the future is waiting to be written.
Let’s grow a new world together.
