BERKELEY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ansa Biotechnologies today announced that it has raised $7.9 million in an oversubscribed Seed round of funding led by Horizons Ventures, with participation from Mubadala Capital, Humboldt Fund, and additional investors. Combined with a Pre-Seed round raised in December 2018 led by Fifty Years, the company has raised $9.2 million to date.
The new investment will accelerate the development of Ansa’s next-generation DNA synthesis technology. Ansa will use the funds to recruit world-class talent, build out new, state-of-the-art R&D facilities, and establish strategic industrial partnerships. “Biology-based technology will continue to revolutionize multiple industries, and Ansa is poised to deliver the next generation of synthetic DNA to support this transformation. We believe that faster and more accurate DNA synthesis is foundational to fueling innovation in both biotechnology and basic biological research,” said Daniel Arlow, Ph.D., CEO of Ansa. “To achieve our goals, we will rapidly expand our team by hiring top talent from industry and academia over the next few months.”
“DNA read, write, and edit are the core pillars of synthetic biology,” said Seth Bannon, Founding Partner at Fifty Years. “Currently, the ability to write DNA is the main bottleneck in the synthetic biology industry. By enabling faster, longer, and higher quality DNA synthesis with their fully enzymatic process, Ansa will help accelerate the entire synthetic biology industry.”
“Ansa’s unique and versatile enzymatic approach promises to set the standard for DNA synthesis speed and accuracy,” said Patrick Zhang of Horizons Ventures. “We are excited to partner with Ansa to support the development of this critical technology that will streamline writing the DNA code that powers the synthetic biology industry.”
About Ansa Biotechnologies
Ansa Biotechnologies is building a faster and cheaper DNA synthesis service to accelerate synthetic biology research. Ansa’s core technology is a novel DNA synthesis method based on enzymes that will be faster, cleaner and more accurate than existing methods. The unique approach, developed by the founders at UC Berkeley, uses an engineered template-independent polymerase conjugated to a single nucleoside triphosphate molecule to rapidly build a DNA sequence one base at a time. For more information, visit ansabio.com or follow on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Horizons Ventures
Horizons Ventures, the private investment arm of Mr. Li Ka-shing, is a leading investor in some of the world’s most innovative companies and disruptive technologies including Facebook, Spotify, Zoom, Impossible Foods, Perfect Day and Demetrix. For more information, visit horizonsventures.com.
About Fifty Years
Fifty Years is a San Francisco based seed fund that backs entrepreneurs solving the world’s biggest problems with technology. They’re a leading pre-seed and seed investor in synthetic biology. They’ve seeded many synthetic biology startups shaping the world for the better -- companies like Memphis Meats, Solugen, Lygos, Geltor, and OpenTrons. For more information, visit www.fiftyyears.com.
