Synthesis Capital Hails Triplebar After Leading its $21mn Funding Round

Synthesis Capital, a pivotal FoodTech VC fund globally with over $300 million under management, recently led Triplebar's $21 million funding round and explained its reasons for investing in the US-based biotech firm today.

"Triplebar's technology platform takes a unique approach to unlocking cost and scale, which will help build solid foundations for a more sustainable global food system through better cells," said Rosie Wardle, partner and co-founder of Synthesis Capital.

"Triplebar CEO Maria Cho and her leadership team have demonstrated they understand the risks of focusing on the wrong commercial partners and products when going to market," added Wardle. "They bring an optimal mix of skills and decades of valuable experience in biopharma and SynBio."

Wardle said Triplebar has a unique and targeted approach to the product verticals prioritised through its commercial strategy.

"Triplebar optimises for partners best placed to scale up and profitably commercialise bioproducts, thereby maximising the company's likelihood of securing royalties over time," Wardle said.

She added, "Triplebar's cornerstone partnership with FrieslandCampina Ingredients to bring proteins using precision fermentation to market is a significant validation of the platform."

The complexities of bio-evolution

Nature's biological processes are complex and powerful. However, these take billions of years to evolve. Scientists developed Synthetic Biology (SynBio), the rewriting of life's code to build biological systems that serve human needs. It could speed up manufacturing for almost everything we consume, from fuels and materials to foods and novel drugs.

However, SynBio companies have found it challenging to fulfill such ambitions. Successfully scaling and operating a commercially viable SynBio business has proved difficult, as evidenced by the downfall of pioneering companies Zymergen and Amyris (OTC:AMRSQ).

Triplebar has overcome the scaling and commercial viability with their proprietary, cutting-edge technology that speeds up these processes, making it possible to meet the global population's food and drug needs.

The power to disrupt

Triplebar built the Hyper-ThroughputTM Screening platform (" HyTS"). It solves the issues by dramatically reducing the time and cumulative cost of finding the best-performing strains. The HyTS shrinks the test tube to picolitre-scale microreactors, recreating many complex micro-environments in which single cells are tested.

Unlike any other bio or food tech in the world, Triplebar's platform screens entire libraries containing millions of mutant strains in as little as a day to identify the best-performing ones, allowing Triplebar to sift through large libraries at a fraction of the cost.

Triplebar's platform maintains exceptionally high throughputs without sacrificing assay quality. It has already demonstrated predictability at larger scales, reducing the time and cost of developing commercially robust cell lines.

HyTS is modular and easily scalable, allowing Triplebar and its partners to produce food and pharma bioproducts to meet the demands of the world's faster-than-ever-growing population.

"At Synthesis, we are thrilled to partner with the amazing Triplebar team. We are excited about HyTS's potential to deliver a much-needed step-change in commercial outcomes for SynBio businesses and to help build solid foundations for the future food system through better cells," Wardle concluded.