Synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks is building out its coast-to-coast reach after its latest acquisition.
The 14-year-old, Boston-based company announced on Monday it is acquiring Zymergen, a biotech startup based in Emeryville, California. The acquisition is set to provide Zymergen with $300 million in an all-stock transaction that is anticipated to close within the first quarter of 2023.
Ginkgo’s synthetic biology technology allows “customers to program cells as easily as [they] can program computers,” according to a company statement. As of late, Ginkgo’s technology has been behind the scenes developing vaccines and therapeutics that combat Covid-19. The company also went public last year in a $17.5 billion SPAC merger.
Zymergen designs and produces molecules and materials for 3D printing, water repellent paper treatments and more. According to the company’s website, what it produces allows customers to create “new products faster, cheaper and greener than ever before.”
“We have always had incredible respect for the Zymergen team and the strength of the technologies that they have built for cell programming,” Jason Kelly, Ginkgo’s CEO, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to integrate Zymergen’s capabilities into our foundry, which we expect to accelerate the growth of our platform as we continue to deliver on our mission to make biology easier to engineer for our customers, helping us drive down the costs of cell programming as we invest in scale.”
Through the acquisition, Ginkgo expects Zymergen’s team to accelerate the development of its innovative horizontal synthetic biology platform. Additionally, the Zymergen technical team will be filling open roles at Ginkgo within its cell engineering, automation, digital technology and data teams.
