Synthetic bio pioneer Ginkgo raises $290mn in new funding

Bloomberg

Ginkgo Bioworks Inc raised $290 million in new funding,
giving a boost to a startup that designs organisms to do everything from re-create the scent of an extinct Hawaiian hibiscus to treat liver disorders in humans.
The latest investment brings the Boston-based biotech’s total valuation to $4 billion, according to a person familiar with the company’s finances who wasn’t authorised to discuss them
publicly.
Founded a decade ago by a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate students and then-professor Tom Knight (often dubbed the “godfather of synthetic biology”), Ginkgo’s aim is to design, modify and manufacture organisms that can make existing industrial processes cheaper and more efficient. The company envisions its programmed cells one day bringing biology into every category of industry.
“The theory of Ginkgo is a cell is a cell,” said Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO.
“And so you’ll use the same infrastructure whether you’re programming a mammalian cell or a bacterial cell or yeast. That’s the thing that Ginkgo believes is true and most people don’t believe is true.”
That theory appears to be gaining traction with investors. The company’s latest round of funding brings the total it’s raised to $719 million. T Rowe Price contributed to the round, along with existing investors such as Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment LLC, Viking Global Investors, General Atlantic LLC and the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator.
Kelly said the latest cash infusion will enable Ginkgo to work with smaller companies and expand its efforts in engineering mammalian cells.
“Therapeutics is still a big area of expansion for us,” said Kelly.
Most of Ginkgo’s early work focussed on food, fragrances and and agriculture. More recently, it has expanded into therapeutics. It currently has partnerships with Synlogic Therapeutics to help design living, gut-based treatments for liver ailments and neurological disorders, as well as a deal programming cells for Swiss pharma giant Roche Holdings AG.