Zymergen Raises $130M in Series B Funding

zymlogo_1200Zymergen, an Emeryville, CA-based technology company focused industrial biology, raised $130m in Series B funding.

The round was led by SoftBank Group (TOKYO: 9984) with participation from Data Collective (DCVC), as well as return investors True Ventures, AME Cloud Ventures, DFJ, Innovation Endeavors, Obvious Ventures, and Two Sigma Ventures and new investors Iconiq Capital, Prelude Ventures, and Tao Capital Partners. In addition to the funding, Zymergen also added former U.S. Secretary of Energy and Nobel laureate Dr. Steven Chu, and SoftBank Group International Managing Director Deep Nishar, previously a longtime senior executive at Google and LinkedIn, to its Board of Directors.

The company plans to use the funds to accelerate growth to further support customers ans to recruit talent across software engineering, automation, and biology.

Led by Joshua Hoffman, co-founder and CEO, Zymergen has developed a proprietary platform, which uses robots and machine learning to engineer microbes which have broad applications across industries such as chemicals and materials, agriculture, and healthcare. The company works with customers in these industries to improve the economics of existing products, bring new products to market faster, and to develop entirely new products.

FinSMEs

11/10/2016

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