Wild Microbes Announces Successful $3.3 Million Pre-Seed Financing Round

Feb 21, 2023.

Wild Microbes, a company developing next-generation microbes for biomanufacturing, announced today an oversubscribed $3.3 million pre-seed financing round. The company is building the largest catalog of diverse, industrial microbes in the sector using their high-throughput engineering technology. Wild Microbes’s scalable platform targets new microbes with unique traits and then rapidly domesticates them and develops them for the manufacturing of sustainable products.

The company's initial focus is on new microbes for protein manufacturing. Proteins are used in industries like food, cleaning products, and cosmetics. The production of proteins by microbial fermentation is already a large industry, and its continued growth has the potential to deliver a large and positive impact on the environment. With their technology, Wild Microbes seeks to reduce the cost of existing protein manufacturing processes and reduce the cost, time and risk of bringing new protein products to market.

Beyond proteins, Wild Microbes is exploring new categories ranging from sustainable chemicals to renewable feedstock usage. “The precision fermentation industry relies on a small handful of microbes to make almost every product” said Ben Kramer, cofounder of Wild Microbes. “Meanwhile in nature there are countless microbial species we can harness to make better, cheaper products. We are drawing on billions of years of evolution; nature already did the hard part.”

"We are thrilled to have the support of an outstanding group of investors as we launch Wild Microbes, with a new vision for biomanufacturing," said Tim Wannier, cofounder of Wild Microbes. "This financing round will allow us to begin the development of our microbial engine, and to identify the first specific use cases for our growing strain catalog."

Wild Microbes’s round was led by Climate Capital Bio, with participation from Freeflow Ventures, Agronomics, and Fall Line Capital. Tim and Ben first met as a part of Nucleate’s Activator program and in addition to support through Nucleate, this round also included support from the Activate Fellowship, Third Derivative, Alpine Social Ventures, and a small group of Angel investors.

About Wild Microbes

Wild Microbes is a synthetic biology company developing a catalog of new biomanufacturing hosts. The company's best-in-class genetic toolkit and innovative approach to engineering are set to change the fermentation industry. New microbial species will power a transition to better economics and allow the industry to deliver more bio-products to consumers. For more information, visit www.wildmicrobes.com.

— Wild Microbes Company, February 21, 2023