July 23, 2015

Only four months after its successful Series A round of funding which earned the company $9 million, Boston-based Gingko Bioworks, which creates custom-designed microbes for the agriculture, food, and pharmaceutical industries, has announced it raised $45 million through a Series B round led by Viking Global Partner, and including OS Fund, Y Combinator, and Felicis Ventures.

Founded seven years ago, Gingko Bioworks has operated on $15 million in federal defense funding. Over that time, the company developed a method of creating custom microbes using robots at a fraction of the cost of the same process being conducted by human scientists. The company has already secured contracts with an unnamed agricultural company to create organic pesticides, a French beverage company to develop sweeteners, and the French fragrance firm, Robertet, to create synthetic rose oil.

The new funding will be used to increase its staff to exceed 40 people by the end of the year, to build a second robotic laboratory for the production of microbes, and to expand the fields in which the company works.