Future Fields Closes Oversubscribed $8M Series A to Turn Flies Into Bioreactors That Address Undruggable Diseases and Unlock the AI Bio-revolution

Future Fields, the protein biomanufacturing company behind the worlds first Drosophila-based EntoEngine platform and Instar biofactory, today announced the close of its Series A funding round to expand the companys commercial traction across agriculture, food, and biopharma markets. The $8.0 million USD oversubscribed round was co-led by Amplify Capital, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)s Climate Tech Fund, and R7 Partners, and signals robust investor interest for the companys unique ability to produce critical, challenging proteins at low cost and with low climate impact. Partners from each of the venture firms leading the round will join Future Fields board, including Pascal Lanctot of BDCs Climate Tech Fund, Kathryn Wortsman of Amplify Capital; and Trey Ward of R7 Partners. The funds will be used to expand its operational capacity to produce bioproducts and next-generation medicines, helping overcome the shortage and technical capacity of bioreactors underlying the four trillion dollar syn-bio industry.

Its important to remember that our technology doesnt just mean the ability to create new types of drugs and proteins, said Matt Anderson-Baron, CEO and cofounder of Future Fields. This round attracted a number of marquee venture firms who recognize both the market opportunity and the ethical necessity in creating a sustainable and climate-resilient biomanufacturing infrastructure.

Proteins are a fundamental structure essential to the basic functioning of a multi-trillion swath of industries spanning biopharmaceuticals, medicine, and more. But even before artificial intelligence was inventing new proteins that could potentially treat undruggable diseases like Alzheimers, the status quo approach to their creation was failing to supply industry demands. With geopolitical tensions increasing the need for domestic suppliers of these critical materials, Future Fields is emerging as a key player that recently opened its first commercial facility in December 2024 to scale production for clients that include agricultural leaders, food innovators, and biopharma companies making therapies for cancer and immune disorders.

While conventional approaches use steel tanks propagating cells like Chinese Hamster Ovaries or bacteria like E. coli, Future Fields proprietary EntoEngine turns transgenic fruit flies into biofactories. The approach unlocks orders of magnitude gains in cost and scale while reducing its environmental footprint. Having started first with conventional proteins, the new funding will now power the companys platform expansion to create proteins inside exotic tissues such as neurons, muscle cells, and more, to enable next generation disease research. The news is a significant step forward for the industrys ability to manufacture new proteins for undruggable and intractable diseases as well as those being designed by AI companies. As part of the news, Future Fields is announcing a partnership with Protein Evolution, to produce AI-engineered proteins.

The round includes a number of notable venture capitalists and sustainable funders. Amplify Capital increased their equity stake from the previous round, while BDC Climate Tech Fund and R7 Partners bring an additional wealth of knowledge in solutions to improve life on earth. A number of existing investors joined the round, including returning Toyota Ventures, BoxOne Ventures, and Builders VC, and new funders TRAC VC and University of Alberta Innovation Fund.

Future Fields stands out as a strong choice in our industrial decarbonization focus and has continued to meet milestones from the Series Seed round. Now a technology platform Company with multiple use cases, Future Fields has demonstrated the ability to disrupt traditional biomanufacturing processes to reduce carbon footprint, capital costs, increase quality, supply stability, and improve manufacturing efficiency, said Kathryn Wortsman, Managing Partner at Amplify Capital.

Future Fields technology is a game changer. It brings about a new way of manufacturing proteins at a much lower cost and GHG footprint. Its bioreactors have an important impact on the climate by shrinking the energy consumption, material usage and waste output of an entire industry. Its exactly the type of impactful, innovative company that BDC and its Climate Tech Fund want to invest in and work with to see them grow, said Pascal Lanctot, Partner at BDCs Climate Tech Fund.

We believe that Future Fields will be a key breakthrough in biomanufacturing to support both the creation of new proteins and bridge the massive supply gap that exists already, said Trey Ward, General Partner at R7 Partners.