US-based biomanufacturing technology developer Culture Biosciences has received $80m in a series B round featuring Verily Life Sciences, the life science innovation arm of internet and technology group Alphabet.
Venture capital firm Northpond Ventures led the round and was joined by Synthesis Capital, The Production Board, Cultivian Sandbox Ventures, the MIT Media Lab-affiliated E14 Fund, Craft Ventures and Section 32.
Founded in 2016, Culture has built a a cloud-based platform that allows researchers to carry out bioreactor experiments – a typically arduous and time-consuming process – digitally and semi-autonomously, freeing up more time for design and analysis.
The company’s business model benefits from, among other things, a rising demand for animal-free food like meat and egg protein. The round brings its total funding to over $100m and it will use the proceeds to further develop its platform to improve customer experience.
Cultivian Sandbox Ventures led Culture’s $15m series A round, in March 2020, which was filled out by Verily, The Production Board, E14 Fund, Section 32 and Y Combinator. It came after Verily took part in a $5.5m seed round for the company in early 2019 alongside Refactor Capital.
Will Patrick, Culture’s co-founder and chief executive, said: “Recently there has been an explosion in the number of new companies in synthetic biology and biopharmaceuticals, and large multinational corporations are also increasingly participating in this space.
“Although demand for biomanufactured products – from food to clothing to vaccines – is surging, there is a huge gap in the infrastructure required to produce these bioproducts at commercial scale.”
