{"id":96704,"date":"2019-09-26T20:39:29","date_gmt":"2019-09-27T03:39:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/meet-eight-tech-titans-investing-in-synthetic-biology"},"modified":"2019-09-26T20:39:29","modified_gmt":"2019-09-27T03:39:29","slug":"meet-eight-tech-titans-investing-in-synthetic-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2019\/09\/meet-eight-tech-titans-investing-in-synthetic-biology","title":{"rendered":"Meet Eight Tech Titans Investing In Synthetic Biology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-right: 20px\"><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/meet-eight-tech-titans-investing-in-synthetic-biology2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.\u201d Bill Gates <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_book)\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">wrote<\/a> this in 1995, long before synthetic biology \u2013 a scientific discipline focused on reading, writing, and editing DNA \u2013 was being harnessed to program living cells. Today, the cost to order a custom DNA sequence has fallen faster than Moore\u2019s law; perhaps that\u2019s why the Microsoft founder is turning a significant part of his attention, and wallet, towards this exciting field.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Gates is not the only tech founder billionaire that sees a parallel between bits and biology, either. Many other tech founders \u2013 the same people that made their money programming 1s and 0s \u2013 are now investing in biotech founders poised to make their own fortunes by programming A\u2019s, T\u2019s, G\u2019s and C\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>The industry has raised more than $12.3B in the last 10 years and last year, 98 synthetic biology companies collectively <a href=\"https:\/\/synbiobeta.com\/these-98-synthetic-biology-companies-raised-3-8-billion-in-2018\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">raised $3.8 billion<\/a>, compared to just under $400 million total invested less than a decade ago. Synthetic biology companies are disrupting nearly every industry, from agriculture to medicine to cell-based meats. Engineered microorganisms are even being used to produce more <a href=\"https:\/\/boltthreads.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">sustainable fabrics<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lanzatech.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">manufacture biofuels<\/a> from recycled carbon emissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cDNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.\u201d Bill Gates wrote this in 1995, long before synthetic biology \u2013 a scientific discipline focused on reading, writing, and editing DNA \u2013 was being harnessed to program living cells. Today, the cost to order a custom DNA sequence has [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,1523,1506,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-computing","category-food","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}