Bota Bio Raises $100 Million Series B Financing to Advance Sustainable Bio-manufacturing
- Global industrial biotechnology company focused on programming biological systems and scaling sustainable production of biomolecules
- Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital China brings total funding to $145M
SAN FRANCISCO and HANGZHOU, China, July 29, 2021 Bota Bio, a global industrial biotechnology company advancing sustainable biomanufacturing, today announced that it has raised more than $100 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding round. The financing was led by Sequoia Capital China. Other investors included previous backers Matrix Partners China, Source Code Capital, Sherpa Healthcare Partners, and 5Y Capital, among others. This Series B financing brings Bota Bio’s total funding to $145 million to date.
The new funds will be used to expand the company’s global operations and build out Bota Bio’s lab-to-pilot scale platform to facilitate the rapid scale-up and deployment of the company’s product pipeline in consumer goods, food, nutrition, and pharmaceutical products.
“Most traditional manufacturing comes with a high environmental cost. We are building Bota Bio to innovate solutions that help manufacturers in all industries leverage the power of biology to accelerate the design and scale-up of high-performance products using sustainable processes,” said Cheryl Cui, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO, Bota Bio. “We are empowering a diverse global client base from different industries to develop bio-based alternatives to traditional ingredients. We are thrilled to have this syndicate of renowned investors support our efforts in transforming global manufacturing.”
“Bota Bio is rapidly delivering bio-based and biologically produced products at scale to replace fossil-fuel-based, energy-intensive products and processes with biologically produced sustainable alternatives,” said Neil Shen, founding and managing partner, Sequoia Capital China. “The Bota Bio team has developed a leading integrated platform to bring innovative and efficient solutions to market for their partners. We are confident that Bota will keep enhancing their ability to accelerate the development of bio-based products, creating more value for consumers, while contributing to sustainability on a global scale.”
Bota Bio was founded in 2019 by a team of scientists and industry experts with proven track records in successfully developing and delivering industrial-scale bio-based products to market. The company has developed and deployed a technology platform known as the Bota Freeway that integrates advanced digital tools with lab automation. Bota Bio has also expanded synthetic biology’s design-build-test-learn cycle to include downstream process development and select non-traditional microbial strains, accelerating the design and evolution of enzymes and cell-based factories.
Bota Bio previously announced its strategic investment led by BASF Venture Capital (BVC), the corporate venture arm of BASF Group, one of the world’s leading chemical companies. BASF joined forces with Bota Bio to bring sustainably produced ingredients to market.
About Bota Bio
Bota Bio is the global biotech company connecting biological design to scale-up biomanufacturing to accelerate the shifts to sustainable living. Bota Bio is led by an experienced, multidisciplinary team of industry veterans delivering on nature’s possibilities to inspire and enable a global transformation with biology. For more information, visit www.bota.bio.