Switch Bioworks, a San Carlos, CA-based biotechnology company developing low-cost and sustainable fertilizers, raised $17M in Seed funding.
The round was led by Change Forces Capital and joined by Grantham Foundation, Astanor Ventures, Acre Venture Partners, Anthos Capital, Thia Ventures, Emerson Collective, Ag Ventures Alliance and others.
The company intends to use the funds to complete product development of its carbon-neutral biological nitrogen fertilizer, including initial scale-up fermentation and formulation as well as greenhouse and field trials in the U.S. and internationally.
Led by CEO and Founder Dr. Tim Schnabel, Switch Bioworks is a fertilizer company whose internationally trained team of experts develops microbes that produce sustainable nitrogen fertilizer empowered by synthetic biology. The company engineers symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing microbes that live on plant roots to replace conventional fertilizer, a solution that is carbon-neutral and lower-cost.
Switch was spun out of Stanford University in 2022.
Commenting ont he news, Tim Schnabel said: “What’s been limiting the efficacy of biofertilizers is that as soon as microbes are engineered to make fertilizer, it’s so energy intensive that they are no longer able to compete with native microbes in soil and on plant roots. That’s a problem, because if your microbes get outcompeted in a matter of days, they can’t make a meaningful amount of fertilizer over the crop growing season. At Switch, we’re pioneering a ‘switchable’ engineering approach that enables microbes to first compete and establish themselves on plant roots before switching on fertilizer production.”
FinSMEs
05/09/2024