12 Mar 2024
Tierra Biosciences secures USD 11.4m Series A funding round with participation from Prosus Ventures
SAN LEANDRO, USA 12 MARCH 2024 |Tierra Biosciences, the company behind the world’s first platform for predictive AI-guided cell-free technology enabling high-throughput on-demand custom protein synthesis, announced today that it closed an $11.4M Series A round.
The investment was led by Material Impact with participation from new and existing investors including Prosus Ventures, In-Q-Tel (IQT), Hillspire, Freeflow Ventures, Creative Ventures, and Social Capital.
Tierra, with established relationships among major pharmaceutical, industrial, and agricultural organizations, will now expand its reach and extend its innovative capabilities to a broader set of customers and partners. The funding will additionally play a pivotal role in advancing Tierra’s predictive AI leveraging the large and growing closed loop synthesis parameter data lake generated from its centralized manufacturing of thousands of proteins.
“Traditional protein engineering using living cells is slow, inefficient, and data poor,” stated Michael Nemzek, Tierra CEO, “Tierra’s cell-free protein production platform will change the game, powering our customers’ discovery efforts with rapid access to large numbers of discrete custom proteins for screening and discovery, plus fast yield scale-up for downstream development and pilot work.”
By pioneering high-throughput cell-free platforms and deploying the latest advancements in AI language models, Tierra utilizes its exclusive data to optimally manufacture revolutionary proteins. This goes beyond the confines of nature, sparking imagination and expanding the realms of what is achievable.
“Tierra's platform propels innovation in the bioeconomy by eliminating bottlenecks in protein discovery and manufacturing. We’re excited to partner with them as they fuse high-throughput manufacturing with artificial intelligence, promising not only to reshape the landscape of protein synthesis but also to revolutionize entire industries,” said Corinna Chen, Partner at Material Impact.
Proteins, essential molecules found across all life forms, exhibit remarkable diversity in both structure and function, stemming from a modest set of amino acid building blocks. Their involvement in nearly every biological process underscores their paramount significance in sustaining life and offering substantial therapeutic value.
“Tierra's cutting-edge platform, powered by advanced cell-free technology, is compelling in its ability to play a key role in building critical bio-infrastructure. We believe the result will be a transformative acceleration of protein design-build-test-learn cycles within the industry,” said Chenny Zhang, Principal, Investments at IQT.
About Tierra Biosciences
Tierra Biosciences is a global premier provider offering unparalleled access to innovative engineered proteins. Harnessing advanced high-throughput cell-free platform technologies and deploying AI language models, we leverage our proprietary data to engineer and produce transformative proteins that push the boundaries of what's possible, surpassing nature and igniting the imagination. Our mission is rooted in democratizing access to proteins, driving significant advancements in critical sectors such as human health, environmental sustainability, and global food security. Committed to empowering our customers and partners, we're dedicated to revolutionizing the discovery and production of groundbreaking protein products.
Contacts
Grace Tharmarajah, Ph.D.
[email protected]
510-352-8600
About Prosus
Prosus is a global consumer internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world.
Operating and investing globally in markets with long-term growth potential, Prosus builds leading consumer internet companies that empower people and enrich communities.
The group is focused on building meaningful businesses in the online classifieds, food delivery, payments and fintech, and education technology sectors.
Through the Prosus Ventures team, the group invests in new technology growth opportunities within logistics, fintech, health, blockchain, social and ecommerce platforms, agriculture and more.
The team actively backs exceptional entrepreneurs who are using technology to improve people’s everyday lives.
Each month, more than 2 billion customers across the globe use the products and services of companies that Prosus has invested in, acquired or built. To find out more, please visit www.prosus.com