Computer Aided Biology Pioneer Synthace Secures $25.6 Million in Series B Funding

• Funding will be used to further expand product capabilities and fuel company growth
• Industry-leader is bringing software abstraction and automation to biological R&D and manufacturing

12 December - LONDON

Synthace Ltd., the company behind the leading cloud software platform for automating and improving the success rate of biological research and development, today announced the closing of a $25.6m Series B financing round led by Horizons Ventures with additional investment from Luminous Ventures, SOSV and select other individual and large family office investors. Synthace will use the new funds to drive continued product development and build upon its cell and gene therapy customer base to accelerate global awareness of its solutions.

Synthace is a leader in Computer Aided Biology, a new paradigm that comprises two domains: the Digital and the Physical. The Digital, powered by artificial intelligence, includes software for designing and simulating biological systems, as well as methods of collating, structuring and analysing experimental data. The Physical, enabled by automation, includes systems that allow for the seamless transfer of biological designs into real ‘wet lab’ experiments via logistics simulation and execution.

In October 2018, Synthace launched a white paper, Computer Aided Biology: Delivering Biotechnology in the 21st Century which provides the most complete industry vision to date for how biological research will be transformed by an emerging ecosystem of cloud connected and digitally empowered research tools that augment human capabilities, accelerating the transition of biology towards becoming an engineering discipline.
Synthace CEO Tim Fell said: “Digital-to-physical workflows have transformed the semiconductor, aerospace, automobile and many other industries. Now it is the turn of the biotechnology industry, and we are grateful for the support of Horizons Ventures and our other new investment partners who share Synthace’s vision of how to facilitate that change.”

Patrick Zhang, of Horizons Ventures, commented: “We are at a pivotal point in the development and use of biotechnology. We believe that Synthace will lead the industry’s transition to Computer Aided Biology, owing to its truly disruptive and cutting-edge AI driven experiment design capability and experiment execution technology. We look forward to working with the team on this next exciting stage of Synthace’s development.”

Bob Wiederhold, Synthace Chairman, concluded: “The realization is setting in across industry and academia that the complexity of biology can only be properly addressed with advanced software and automation. This investment in Synthace is a significant step in turning that recognition into reality.”
This announcement follows previous distinctions from Gartner and the World Economic Forum, where the impact of the Synthace platform in enabling the Lab of the Future and Industry 4.0 was recognised.

About Synthace

Based in London, Synthace is developing Antha, a language and software platform specifically for biology that lets researchers aim higher and achieve better results, faster. Antha is designed to make reproducible and scalable workflows that can be readily edited and shared, and easily automated on labs’ existing equipment. With customers across pharma, agritech and industrial biotechnology Synthace has been recognised by the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer that is helping shape the Fourth Industrial Revolution – a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another. For more information, visit: www.synthace.com.