What are the top synthetic biology startups by total funding raised?

Top startups in the Synthetic Biology market ranked by total funding raised

Here is an updated table that ranks the top startups in the Synthetic Biology market based on the total amount of funding they have raised to date.

The table also includes the total number of funding rounds, the date and size of the latest round, the financing type (e.g. Series A, equity financing), key investors, the startup’s current status (active, IPO, acquired, or shut down), and a confidence score based on the data collected (we excluded startups with very low data confidence, to make sure everything is reliable).

If you need to dig deeper and get more detailed data, please check our report covering the Synthetic Biology market.

Impossible Foods still sits at the top of the synthetic biology funding ranking, while Generate Biomedicines has quickly moved into the same billion-dollar club.

Using the equity totals in our dataset, the top 20 companies have raised about $12.27 billion altogether. Impossible Foods leads with at least $1.7 billion in the reconstructed ranking, followed by Generate Biomedicines at more than $1.1 billion, Zymergen at about $876 million, Perfect Day at roughly $802 million and Ginkgo Bioworks at about $789 million before its public-market financing history is considered.

Impossible Foods' own 2021 announcement actually said the company had raised close to $2 billion since inception, so its true lifetime equity total appears higher than the conservative figure in the table. Generate has meanwhile become much easier to place: its $400 million IPO added a huge public-equity financing event to an already large private funding history.

The top 10 alone account for about $8.34 billion, around 68% of all funding represented by the first 20 companies. Synthetic biology's funding leaderboard is heavily shaped by a relatively small group of extremely capital-intensive businesses.

Rank	Startup	Approx. cumulative equity funding in dataset	Main activity	Current position
1	Impossible Foods	$1.7B+	Plant-based food and fermentation	Private
2	Generate Biomedicines	$1.1B+	AI-designed therapeutics	Public
3	Zymergen	$876M	Engineered microbes and materials	Acquired
4	Perfect Day	$802M	Precision-fermented dairy proteins	Private
5	Ginkgo Bioworks	$789M	Cell programming and bioengineering	Public
6	Obsidian Therapeutics	$675M	Engineered TIL therapies	Public
7	ArsenalBio	$630M	Programmable cell therapies	Private
8	Pivot Bio	$617M	Microbial nitrogen products	Private
9	Solugen	$613M	Bio-based chemicals	Private
10	Tessera Therapeutics	$533M+	Gene-writing medicines	Private

Is Impossible Foods still the most-funded synthetic biology startup?

Yes, Impossible Foods still appears to be the most-funded company in this synthetic biology ranking today, and the $1.7 billion figure in our dataset is probably conservative.

Impossible Foods said directly in 2021 that a new $500 million round had taken total capital raised since 2011 to close to $2 billion. That financing came after another $500 million round in 2020 and a $200 million financing later the same year.

Those three rounds alone represent roughly $1.2 billion. Few synthetic biology companies have ever raised that much across their entire existence.

Its funding history also captures the previous capital cycle. Investors were once willing to finance plant-based meat at a scale usually associated with major biotechnology platforms or late-stage software companies. These days, food biotechnology investors are demanding much clearer evidence around demand, margins and manufacturing costs before writing checks of that size.

How much funding has Generate Biomedicines raised?

Generate Biomedicines has now raised more than $1 billion in equity and has become one of the clearest examples of money moving toward AI-driven drug development.

Generate priced 25 million shares at $16 each in its IPO, generating $400 million in gross proceeds. That single transaction was almost as large as the entire cumulative funding history of many established synthetic biology companies.

Generate's position is especially interesting because its capital story is current rather than mostly historical. The company remains active as a listed clinical-stage biotech and, according to its latest company updates, is advancing multiple programs while its lead severe-asthma asset has reached Phase 3 development.

That gives Generate a different profile from older names near the top of the ranking. Its billion-dollar funding total has been built around a combination of computational protein design, clinical drug development and access to both private and public equity markets.

What are the biggest funding rounds ever raised by synthetic biology startups?

The largest synthetic biology rounds reach $300 million to $500 million, putting the sector's biggest financings in the same league as major late-stage technology rounds.

Impossible Foods raised about $500 million in a single financing. Pivot Bio followed with a $430 million Series D. Generate's IPO brought in $400 million, Obsidian completed a $350 million PIPE, ArsenalBio raised $325 million in Series C funding and Tessera secured more than $300 million in its Series C.

Those amounts help explain why the cumulative ranking becomes concentrated so quickly. A company raising one $400 million round can collect more capital in a few weeks than dozens of young synthetic biology startups will raise throughout their lives.

The timing also reveals a shift. Many of the giant food, industrial and general-platform rounds came during the earlier funding boom. Some of the biggest transactions lately have gone toward clinical therapeutics, engineered cell therapies and companies combining computation with biology.

Startup	Major financing	Amount
Impossible Foods	Late-stage equity round	~$500M
Pivot Bio	Series D	$430M
Generate Biomedicines	IPO	$400M
Obsidian Therapeutics	PIPE	$350M
ArsenalBio	Series C	$325M
Tessera Therapeutics	Series C	$300M+
Zymergen	Series D	$300M
Bolt Threads	Series E	$253M
Motif FoodWorks	Series B	$226M
DNA Script	Series C	$200M
Solugen	Series D	$200M+

How concentrated is funding among the biggest synthetic biology startups?

Synthetic biology funding is extremely concentrated: about 43% of the capital represented by our top 20 sits in only five companies.

The first five companies in our dataset account for approximately $5.27 billion. Expand the group to the top 10 and the total reaches roughly $8.34 billion, or 68% of the top 20's $12.27 billion.

That concentration changes how market-wide fundraising headlines should be read. Generate raising $400 million or Obsidian bringing in $350 million can make aggregate investment numbers jump even when funding remains difficult for dozens of smaller companies.

A funding rebound can therefore happen without becoming an easy fundraising environment. A few investors can deploy enormous checks into companies they consider exceptional while remaining much more cautious everywhere else.

What kinds of synthetic biology startups have raised the most money?

Therapeutics, industrial biology, food biotechnology and research infrastructure have all produced companies with several hundred million dollars in funding, although therapeutics currently has the strongest momentum near the top.

Our top 20 includes Generate, Obsidian, ArsenalBio, Tessera, Synlogic and Senti Biosciences on the therapeutics side. Industrial biology contributes Zymergen, Pivot Bio, Solugen, Spiber and Geno. Food contributes Impossible Foods, Perfect Day and Motif FoodWorks, while Ginkgo, Benchling, Synthego, Inscripta and DNA Script sit closer to enabling technology and infrastructure.

That spread is one reason "synthetic biology funding" can be misleading when presented as a single market number. Developing a cancer therapy, selling microbial fertilizer and building cloud software for biotech laboratories all require very different levels of capital.

We can still see where investors are moving. Clinical therapeutics and AI-enabled biological design are currently producing some of the biggest new financings, while food and materials companies face a tougher test around manufacturing economics.

Area	Major companies in the top 20	Approx. funding represented
Therapeutics	Generate, Obsidian, ArsenalBio, Tessera, Synlogic, Senti	~$3.7B
Industrial, agriculture and materials	Zymergen, Pivot Bio, Solugen, Spiber, Geno	~$2.9B
Food and alternative protein	Impossible, Perfect Day, Motif	~$2.8B
Research tools and infrastructure	Ginkgo, Synthego, Benchling, Inscripta, DNA Script	~$2.4B
Biofabricated materials	Bolt Threads	~$471M

Why are synthetic biology therapeutics raising such huge rounds?

Synthetic biology therapeutics can absorb hundreds of millions because investors are financing expensive clinical programs against the possibility of drug-level economics.

Generate's $400 million IPO, Obsidian's $350 million PIPE and ArsenalBio's $325 million Series C show the scale. Tessera had already raised more than $300 million in a single Series C, while newer companies such as Strand Therapeutics have continued the pattern with a $153 million Series B.

Clinical development can burn through huge amounts of cash, but successful medicines can also support high pricing and very large markets. That economic ceiling is much higher than it is for a company trying to manufacture commodity chemicals or food ingredients.

Investors still face brutal risk. ArsenalBio provides a useful current reminder. After raising $325 million in 2024 to advance programmable cell therapies, the company recently shifted its strategy toward in-vivo CAR-T programs and announced a substantial workforce reduction. Huge funding gives a biotech more chances to succeed; it does not lock its original strategy in place.

Are precision-fermentation and food startups still raising huge rounds?

Precision-fermentation and alternative-protein startups can still raise money, but the $300 million to $500 million food rounds of the previous boom have become much harder to find.

Impossible Foods accumulated close to $2 billion. Perfect Day reached roughly $800 million in our dataset. Motif FoodWorks raised about $344 million before eventually shutting down.

Perfect Day's more recent financing shows how the conversation has changed. The company announced up to $90 million of new funding in 2024, led by existing investors, and explicitly talked about scaled manufacturing, unit economics and a path to profitability.

Those words would have received less attention during the peak financing years, when investors were much more willing to fund capacity expansion ahead of proven economics.

Food biotechnology still has serious backers today. The hurdle is higher. Investors increasingly want evidence that a product can reach competitive costs, secure reliable manufacturing and generate repeat demand before they fund the next large scale-up.

Is industrial synthetic biology still attracting serious funding?

Yes, industrial synthetic biology still attracts large amounts of capital when companies can show that the biology works outside a small laboratory.

Pivot Bio is a good example. Its $430 million Series D took total equity funding above $600 million, and the company said its products had already been used on more than one million acres during the period surrounding that round. Pivot later reported usage across five million U.S. acres.

Solugen followed a similar path from technology toward physical production. When it announced its $200 million-plus Series D, the company said its first Bioforge was already supporting a business approaching nine figures in revenue. Solugen later obtained a conditional commitment for a $213.6 million U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee for another Bioforge.

Geno provides a third example from a different angle. After decades developing fermentation processes for chemicals, Genomatica was recently acquired by Again, combining Geno's commercial biomanufacturing experience with Again's carbon-to-chemicals platform.

Industrial synthetic biology still gets funded. These days, investors have far more reason to ask about kilograms, factories, customers and margins alongside strain performance.

Is AI changing which synthetic biology startups get funded?

Yes, AI is changing the synthetic biology funding map, especially around protein design, drug discovery and automated experimentation.

Generate is already one of the most-funded companies in the entire ranking. Further down, Profluent has raised large rounds around AI-designed proteins and genome editors. EvolutionaryScale launched with $142 million of funding around generative protein models. Cradle raised $73 million in Series B financing for AI-powered protein engineering.

The pattern extends beyond companies carrying an obvious "AI biotech" label. Ginkgo is currently pushing much harder into autonomous laboratories, where robotics and software can run experiments continuously and feed physical biological data back into computational systems.

This creates a stronger link between model quality and wet-lab execution. Designing a promising protein on a computer is only one part of the job; companies still need to test it, manufacture it and prove that it works.

The most interesting capital is therefore moving toward companies that can connect computation and physical biology rather than treating them as separate worlds.

Which synthetic biology startups have raised major funding recently?

The largest recent synthetic biology financings are clustering around therapeutics and advanced biological design rather than broadly across every part of the sector.

Generate brought in $400 million through its IPO. Obsidian completed a $350 million PIPE around its public-market transaction. Strand Therapeutics raised $153 million in Series B funding. Profluent raised more than $100 million. The EVERY Company, Ansa Biotechnologies and several other companies in our broader dataset have also added meaningful new equity.

What has changed is the level of proof attached to these financings. Therapeutic companies usually have defined clinical programs. Industrial companies increasingly point to production assets or customers. AI-biology companies need convincing proprietary data, models or laboratory loops.

A large addressable market and an elegant scientific platform still help, but they carry less weight on their own than they did during the previous funding cycle.

Are newer synthetic biology startups catching the old funding leaders?

Yes, a newer group is climbing quickly, although cumulative funding rankings naturally favor companies that have been raising capital for a decade.

Impossible Foods, Ginkgo, Perfect Day, Pivot Bio and several other early leaders built their totals through years of repeated financings. A company founded much later needs several enormous rounds to catch them.

Generate has managed exactly that. ArsenalBio reached roughly $630 million after just a few major financings. Strand raised $153 million in one Series B. EvolutionaryScale started with $142 million of funding. Profluent also passed $100 million rapidly.

The mix of companies moving fastest now looks different from the earlier leaderboard. AI-designed proteins, programmable therapeutics, gene editing and automated biological R&D appear far more frequently.

ArsenalBio also shows how quickly that newer generation can change direction. Its current move from autologous solid-tumor programs toward in-vivo CAR-T means even a heavily funded next-generation company can reassess where its technology has the best chance of working.

Did the synthetic biology startups that raised the most money actually succeed?

No. Several of the best-funded synthetic biology startups later went through acquisitions, shutdowns, restructurings or major strategic resets.

Zymergen raised about $876 million privately in our dataset and later went public, yet Ginkgo agreed to acquire it in a transaction initially valued at only about $300 million.

Synthego raised hundreds of millions before entering Chapter 11 and selling substantially all of its assets to funds managed by Perceptive Advisors. The operating business survived under new ownership.

Synlogic announced that it would cease operations after an internal review indicated its pivotal PKU trial was unlikely to meet its primary endpoint. Motif FoodWorks, despite roughly $344 million of funding in our dataset, also ultimately closed.

At the same time, other large financings have produced businesses that remain active at meaningful scale. Pivot Bio is still selling biological nitrogen products, Benchling remains a major biotech software platform, and Generate has reached the public market with late-stage clinical programs.

Funding tells us how strongly investors backed a company at different points in its history. Commercial or clinical success has to be measured separately.

What happened to Zymergen after it raised $876 million?

Zymergen went from being one of synthetic biology's flagship venture-backed companies to a roughly $300 million acquisition agreement with Ginkgo Bioworks.

The fall was dramatic because Zymergen had entered the public market with expectations built around a repeatable platform for designing and commercializing bio-based products.

When Ginkgo announced the acquisition in 2022, the companies said the all-stock deal valued Zymergen at approximately $300 million based on Ginkgo's share price at the time. The acquisition was attractive to Ginkgo partly because Zymergen had built valuable automation, software, machine-learning and strain-engineering capabilities.

Zymergen remains one of the clearest warnings against reading a huge funding total as proof of a durable business. The company created technology that another synthetic biology platform wanted, while its own standalone commercial model failed to justify anything close to the expectations attached to it earlier.

What happened to Spiber after it raised hundreds of millions?

Spiber's technology continues through a new operating company, while the legacy company entered a severe financial restructuring after accumulating hundreds of millions in funding.

Our ranking contains more than $489 million of identified equity financing for Spiber. Broader financing databases can show much larger totals because they count additional forms of capital, which is exactly why round-by-round reconstruction matters.

Tokyo Shoko Research reported that the legacy Japanese company faced roughly ¥30 billion of negative net worth and planned special liquidation after transferring most of the operating business to a new company.

A new Spiber subsequently took over the core business.

For readers looking at a historical funding ranking, the old company's capital still belongs in the record. For anyone asking whether Spiber exists today, the answer needs the restructuring context because the operating technology survived while the original corporate structure did not.

What happened to Synthego after it raised hundreds of millions?

Synthego survived, but its original venture-backed capital structure did not.

The CRISPR company entered Chapter 11 in 2025 as part of a planned sale of substantially all of its assets to funds managed by Perceptive Advisors. Synthego said the transaction would allow its operations, employees, customer relationships and brand to continue.

That makes "acquired" a more useful current description than "shutdown." Still, the way the acquisition happened matters. A bankruptcy asset sale carries a completely different meaning for earlier shareholders than a competitive takeover at a large premium.

Synthego is a useful case for this entire ranking because the technology, company name and customer activity can continue even when the financial outcome for the original venture structure is poor.

Is Ginkgo Bioworks still a major synthetic biology company today?

Yes, Ginkgo Bioworks remains one of synthetic biology's biggest infrastructure companies, although the business is currently much smaller and more focused than the platform investors originally funded.

Ginkgo reported $170 million in full-year 2025 revenue, down from $227 million a year earlier. Its latest reported quarter produced $20 million in revenue versus $39 million in the comparable period, a 48% decline. Cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities stood at about $302 million.

The company has been restructuring and rationalizing programs while putting much more emphasis on autonomous laboratories. Ginkgo now talks heavily about Nebula, robotics and AI-enabled experimentation, including government-backed cloud-lab projects.

That makes Ginkgo an interesting marker for where synthetic biology infrastructure is heading. The original foundry concept centered on making biological engineering more standardized. The current version adds autonomous experiments, software and AI much more aggressively.

Ginkgo is still relevant, but the business investors are watching today looks materially different from the Ginkgo of the synthetic biology boom.

Are synthetic biology IPOs coming back?

Generate Biomedicines shows that a large synthetic biology-related IPO can work again, but one successful $400 million listing does not yet amount to a broad IPO reopening for the whole sector.

Generate priced its offering at $16 per share and raised $400 million before underwriting expenses. The company is currently listed on Nasdaq and continues reporting as a public clinical-stage biotech.

Obsidian reached the public market differently. Its merger transaction with Galera was paired with a $350 million PIPE, and the combined company now trades under the OBX ticker.

Those deals prove that public investors will still supply very large amounts of capital when the underlying biotechnology story is strong enough.

Other public-market outcomes have been much rougher. Bolt's public vehicle received a Nasdaq delisting decision after failing to satisfy the exchange's minimum equity requirement. Ginkgo has spent years restructuring after its public debut.

For now, the public market appears open selectively rather than broadly.

Who are the biggest investors behind synthetic biology startups?

Synthetic biology's largest startups have repeatedly attracted specialist biotech funds, crossover investors, sovereign capital and large generalist growth investors.

T. Rowe Price appears across companies such as Generate, ArsenalBio and DNA Script. Flagship Pioneering is central to Generate and Tessera. Temasek backed Pivot Bio and Bolt Threads and also participated in Impossible Foods. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 invested in companies including Tessera and Synthego. Fidelity has appeared in Generate, Inscripta and other major biotechnology financings.

DCVC has been particularly visible on the industrial side, including Pivot Bio and Zymergen. ARCH, NEA, Regeneron Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, General Atlantic and several other large funds also recur across the wider ranking.

The interesting point is how widely these investors crossed subsectors. During the peak years, the same pools of capital were willing to back food, industrial materials, agricultural microbes, genetic medicines and laboratory infrastructure under the broader idea that biology was becoming programmable.

Investor	Examples from the ranking	Typical exposure
T. Rowe Price	Generate, ArsenalBio, DNA Script	Late-stage biotech
Flagship Pioneering	Generate, Tessera	Therapeutics and company creation
Temasek	Pivot Bio, Bolt Threads, Impossible Foods	Food, agriculture and materials
SoftBank Vision Fund 2	Tessera, Synthego	Large growth financings
Fidelity	Generate, Inscripta	Late-stage and growth
DCVC	Zymergen, Pivot Bio	Deep tech and industrial biology
General Atlantic	Ginkgo, Motif FoodWorks	Growth-stage platforms
Regeneron Ventures	ArsenalBio and other genetic-medicine companies	Therapeutics

Are corporate investors becoming more important in synthetic biology?

Yes, corporate investors matter more as synthetic biology companies move from proving the science to manufacturing and selling products.

Geno's history illustrates the pattern well. The company attracted strategic investors and partners including Kao, L'Oréal and Unilever while building fermentation processes for chemicals and materials. More recently, Again acquired Genomatica, bringing Geno's commercial biomanufacturing experience into a carbon-to-chemicals company.

The same logic appears across the broader market. Danone has invested around next-generation dairy, H&M and IKEA-related capital has backed textile biotechnology, and major pharmaceutical groups have financed or partnered with engineered-cell and gene-therapy platforms.

A corporate investor can open doors that pure financial capital cannot easily open: factories, suppliers, regulatory expertise, customers and distribution.

That becomes particularly valuable in synthetic biology because reaching industrial scale is often harder than proving the underlying biological mechanism.

Does total funding tell us which synthetic biology companies are strongest today?

No. Cumulative funding is useful for measuring how much equity investors committed to a company, while today's strength depends on what happened after that money arrived.

Zymergen makes the distinction obvious. Hundreds of millions in private funding and a public listing were followed by an acquisition at a fraction of earlier expectations.

Synthego's financing history was also large, yet the company later went through Chapter 11 and an asset sale. Spiber's operating technology survived a major corporate restructuring. Synlogic stopped operating after a pivotal clinical setback.

On the other side, Pivot Bio has converted major funding into commercial agricultural deployment, Generate has reached public markets and Phase 3 drug development, and Benchling has built a widely used software business.

A funding ranking answers one precise question very well: which companies convinced equity investors to commit the most capital over time? Readers should avoid turning that answer automatically into a ranking of today's best businesses.

Is synthetic biology funding actually recovering now?

Synthetic biology funding looks healthier than it did immediately after the venture downturn, although today's market rewards a much narrower set of stories.

The evidence sits in the size of recent transactions. Generate raised $400 million publicly. Obsidian secured $350 million through a PIPE. Strand attracted $153 million. Profluent crossed $100 million in a single recent round. Other companies in AI biology, gene editing and precision fermentation are still closing meaningful financings.

At the same time, the market keeps producing restructurings and strategic resets. ArsenalBio recently changed direction and reduced its workforce. Ginkgo is still restructuring. Bolt's public company was delisted. Several highly funded companies from the previous cycle have already disappeared or changed ownership.

So the recovery looks selective. Investors are writing enormous checks when they see clinical progress, proprietary biological data, credible manufacturing or a strong computational advantage. Companies selling a broad platform story without those proofs face a much tougher market.

What does the synthetic biology funding ranking really tell us today?

The synthetic biology funding ranking shows that investors still believe biology can produce enormous companies, but they have become far less forgiving about how those companies turn science into a working business.

The top 20 in our dataset have attracted roughly $12.27 billion of equity. Impossible Foods alone approached $2 billion according to its own disclosure. Generate has now crossed $1 billion. Several other companies reached $500 million to $900 million.

That enormous capital base produced a very mixed set of outcomes. Pivot Bio commercialized microbial nitrogen. Generate reached the public market and late-stage clinical development. Solugen built industrial production. Zymergen was acquired after a severe collapse in expectations. Synthego went through Chapter 11. Synlogic ceased operations. Spiber's legacy company entered restructuring. Geno was acquired. ArsenalBio is currently redirecting its technology toward in-vivo CAR-T.

The shift in investor behavior is now fairly clear. During the previous boom, ambitious platform stories could pull in hundreds of millions before the commercial model had really been tested. Today, investors still fund ambitious science, but they increasingly want a visible route from biology to clinical results, industrial production, customers or defensible economics.

That makes the ranking more interesting than a simple list of who raised the most. It captures the scale of the original synthetic biology bet, the expensive lessons that followed, and the kinds of companies investors are prepared to back heavily now.