Bioeconomy Fund 1 completes $8.3M of investments in six companies that are building critical infrastructure for the 21st century global economy.
For Immediate Release
Bioeconomy Fund 1 completes $8.3M of investments in six companies that are building critical infrastructure for the 21st century global economy.
SEATTLE, Washington – Sep 13, 2017 – Bioeconomy Capital announces that Fund 1 is fully invested. Fund 1 portfolio companies exemplify the breadth and impact of biological technologies on consumers, businesses, and markets. Bioeconomy Capital engages at an early stage with entrepreneurs to accelerate the maturation of the bioeconomy.
Bioeconomy Fund 1 portfolio companies are already having measurable impacts that revolutionize business. Zymergen delivered an optimized organism to its first customer that improved gross margins by 50% on a high volume chemical, and the company is now valued at over $450M. Synthace shipped automation and process control software to customers that improved lab productivity by an order of magnitude and independently lowered costs by an additional 33%. RoosterBio has reduced the manufacturing cost of mesenchymal stem cells by a factor of 100, creating the possibility of a printer for living tissue that uses stem cell “ink”.
Dr. Rob Carlson, Managing Director, says “We set out to invest in fundamental technology advances in biological engineering and manufacturing. Biotechnology is a much larger portion of the economy than most people realize, generating more than 2% of U.S. GDP in 2012, or greater than $324 billion.”
Biotech revenues are spread roughly evenly across biologics (drugs), crops, and industrial biotech (chemicals, enzymes, and tools). The industrial portion of these revenues are estimated to be more than $104 billion and to have grown at 10–20% annually for the last decade. From 2010 to 2012, biotech revenue growth accounted for 6% of total U.S. GDP growth. (Sources: Dr. Rob Carlson, Congressional Briefing, U.S. Senate, 5 Nov 2013; Nature Biotechnology, Mar 2016).
Says Carlson, “There is no obvious limit to how large the bioeconomy can become. We are already seeing examples of biochemicals outcompeting petrochemicals on both price and performance. The keys to catalyzing progress are, first, the development of new bioengineering tools and, second, bringing design for manufacturing to biology. That is where Bioeconomy Capital comes in. After a mere three years, Fund 1 portfolio companies are already making measurable differences for their customers. And we are only just getting started.”
About Bioeconomy Capital
Bioeconomy Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm that specializes in companies that are laying the foundation for the rapidly expanding bioeconomy. We expect advances in biology to profoundly improve the human condition and contribute to the global economy. Bioeconomy Capital invests primarily in: (i) technologies that enable biological engineering and production; and (ii) companies that use those technologies to produce goods and services. For further information, please visit www.bioeconomy.capital.