US synthetic biology startup Ginkgo Bioworks has announced its plan to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in a deal that values it at $15 billion.<\/p>\n
The Boston-based biotech is set to combine with Nasdaq-listed Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp, with the merger expected to provide up to $2.5 billion in cash proceeds.<\/p>\n
While most of that comes from Soaring Eagle\u2019s coffers, about a third has been raised via a $775 million private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal from a range of new and existing investors.<\/p>\n
Among the PIPE participants are lead investors Baillie Gifford, Putnam Investments, and Morgan Stanley\u2019s Counterpoint Global.<\/p>\n
ARK Investment Management, ArrowMark Partners, Bain Capital, Berkshire Partners, Casdin Capital, Franklin Advisers, T. Rowe Price, Viking Global Investors, and Cascade Investment \u2014 the private fund of Microsoft co-founder and sustainability advocate Bill Gates \u2014 also took part in the PIPE deal.<\/p>\n
Early investors in Ginkgo Bioworks that should be able to exit the company after its listing include Viking Global, Y Combinator\u2019s Continuity Fund, Cascade Investment, private equity firm General Atlantic, New York-based hedge fund Senator Investment Group, Baillie Gifford, Data Collective, Felicis Ventures, OS Fund, Vast Ventures, and Eleven Two Capital.<\/p>\n
Bill Gates tells Reddit why he\u2019s bought so much farmland \u2013 read more here
\nFounded by a group of MIT alumni in 2008, Ginkgo Bioworks has developed a tech platform that uses synthetic biology, genetic engineering, robotics, data analytics, and software to \u2018program\u2019 microbes for different purposes.<\/p>\n
Taglining itself as \u2018The Organism Company,\u2019 Ginkgo says its \u2018engineered biology\u2019 capabilities are relevant in a multitude of industries, from industrial chemicals and food production to agriculture and healthcare.<\/p>\n
In food, it established a spin-off company, Motif Ingredients, in 2019 to leverage its tech in order to develop cell-cultured and plant-based proteins for the growing \u2018slaughter-free meat\u2019 industry through biotech and fermentation.<\/p>\n
Motif raised $90 million for its Series A round from investors including Netherlands-based agrifood firm Louis Dreyfus Company, New Zealand dairy co-op Fonterra, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures \u2013 the sustainability-focused fund led by the aforementioned Gates with backing from myriad other billionaires including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, Reid Hoffman, Jack Ma, and Masayoshi Son.<\/p>\n
On the ag side, Ginkgo has a joint venture with agriculture seed and chemicals company Bayer called Joyn Bio, which is using Ginkgo\u2019s engineered microbes to create biological alternatives to synthetically produced crop inputs like fertilizers and pesticides.<\/p>\n
McKinsey estimates that the total market for bioengineered products could grow to as much as $4 trillion in value over the next couple of decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe magic of biology is that cells run on digital code similar to a computer, except that instead of zeros and ones, it\u2019s As, Ts, Cs, and Gs,\u201d Jason Kelly, Gingko co-founder and CEO, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cGinkgo\u2019s platform makes it easier to program this code, and we are making this platform available to organizations working to solve our most pressing problems. From mRNA vaccines reaching people\u2019s arms to combating climate change, the opportunity to work with programmed cells has never been more apparent.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company said it earns \u201cusage-based revenues\u201d by helping its enterprise clients to carry out R&D around cell programming at scale. It also seeks to secure additional revenue streams through royalties generated by products and services developed using its platform, or by taking equity stakes in client companies.<\/p>\n
Ginkgo said it will use the capital raised through the merger to \u201cdramatically increase the scale\u201d of its tech platform, \u201caccelerating the number of new programs [it is] able to launch\u201d every year.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese programs have the potential for positive ESG impact as Ginkgo\u2019s customers are using cell programming to address some of the biggest challenges the world is facing today, from climate change to food security to pandemic response,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n
The merger is being co-sponsored by Soaring Eagle parent Eagle Equity Partners and Bellco Capital, which is led by gene therapy expert and founder of Allogene Therapeutics and Kite Pharma, Arie Belldegrun. Both firms also invested in the PIPE.<\/p>\n
Ginkgo said its senior management team, including Kelly and co-founder and president Reshma Shetty, will remain in place following the merger. They\u2019ll be joined by several new board members, including Belldegrun and former Bayer and Thermo Fisher Scientific CEO, and former Unilever chairman, Marijn Dekkers.<\/p>\n
The deal is just the latest in a string of SPAC mergers to take agrifoodtech and related companies public in the US. This week, US crop genetics startup\u00a0Benson Hill announced it will merge with NYSE-listed Star Peak Corp II at a reported valuation of $2 billion. Kentucky-based indoor ag company AppHarvest\u00a0combined with Nasdaq-traded Novus Capital in February at a\u00a0$1 billion-plus valuation; while vertical farmer\u00a0AeroFarms\u00a0is completing a\u00a0$1.2 billion merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian \u2018super app\u2019 Grab \u2014 which claims to be the region\u2019s leading food delivery provider \u2014 announced a $40 billion merger with Altimeter Growth Corp in April, in what would be the biggest SPAC deal to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US synthetic biology startup Ginkgo Bioworks has announced its plan to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in a deal that values it at $15 billion. The Boston-based biotech is set to combine with Nasdaq-listed Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp, with the merger expected to provide up to $2.5 billion in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838],"supplier":[9441],"class_list":["post-88548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","supplier-ginkgo-bioworks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88548"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=88548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}