Twist Bioscience secures $31.1m

Twist Bioscience, a biotech focussed on synthetic DNA, has raised $31.1m. The investments bring the company’s total funds to $40.2m. Tao Invest led the round that also included Paladin Capital – which runs the Homeland Security fund – as well as Arch Venture Partners – which traces its roots back to being part of Chicago University’s tech transfer office. Keith Crandell, co-founder and managing partner at Arch, is a board member of Twist Bioscience. The round also included Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner, among others, as well as all existing investors. 

The company has also secured a $5.1m contract from DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, to develop its technology platform for large-scale, high-throughput construction of genetic designs. The contract was awarded under the $110m Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules programme, and will last two years. The aim of the programme it is to build scalable, rapid, integrated design and prototype infrastructure for bio-engineering.

Twist will use the series B funding to commercialise its semiconductor-based synthetic gene manufacturing process. It will also grow its staff, planning to hire 80 employees over the next 18 months in the fields of informatics, hardware and software engineering, chemistry, biochemistry, sales and marketing, and operations.

Emily Leproust, chief executive of Twist Bioscience, said: “In just 10 months, we have established a top tier leadership and development team, created a working prototype of our 10,000-well silicon platform for synthetic DNA production and raised a total of $40.2m. Today, we have all the necessary components in place to automate and scale our synthetic gene manufacturing process and staff strategically, with the goal of bringing our first products and services to the market in 2015.”