Ansa Biotechnologies 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.”