Technology

Posted on March 2, 2020 by staff

£23m funding for Evonetix

Technology

Evonetix has secured £23m funding.

The synthetic biology company plans to introduce its ‘desktop DNA platform’ and increase headcount in scientific, operational and commercial teams at its Cambridge base following the Series B backing.

The round was led by new investor Foresite Capital while existing investors Draper Esprit, DCVC (Data Collective), the Morningside group, Providence Investment Company, Cambridge Consultants Ltd, Rising Tide Fund and Civilization Ventures all participated.

Evonetix was founded in 2015 to develop technology that enables the parallel synthesis of DNA on silicon arrays.

CEO Dr Tim Brears said: “The backing of both our existing and new investors will enable us to fast track development, testing and delivery of our highly parallel desktop platform, which will be available to every researcher to accelerate their ability to use biology on a scale not possible with existing approaches.”

The new funding will be used to accelerate internal technology development, including the integration of Evonetix’s technology to enable the synthesis of DNA on a chip.

The investment will fund the company through to the introduction of its desktop DNA platform which, once fully developed, will facilitate and enable the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology, with application across industries including healthcare, pharma, BioTech, food and agriculture and data storage.

The close of the Series B round brings the total funds raised by the company to $46m. It has the backing of the technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Hermann Hauser.

Jim Tananbaum, CEO and Managing Director at Foresite Capital, said: “Evonetix is developing a desktop, short latency solution to synthesise DNA. We are delighted to support the team in their mission to make biological engineering as accessible and widespread as next-generation sequencing.”