Fly biotech startup Future Fields raises $11.2m in seed extension

• The round’s investors included Bee Partners, Toyota Ventures, Builders VC, AgFunder, Amplify Capital, Milad Alucozai of BoxOne Ventures, Green Circle Foodtech, Siddhi Capital and Climate Capital
• Future Fields will use the funds raised to hire key personnel and build out its first production facility

Future Fields, a fly biotechnology startup based in Edmonton, Alberta, has secured $11.2 million in a seed extension financing.

The round’s new and existing investors included Bee Partners, Toyota Ventures, Builders VC, AgFunder, Amplify Capital, Milad Alucozai of BoxOne Ventures, Green Circle Foodtech, Siddhi Capital and Climate Capital.

Founded in 2018, Future Fields built a biomanufacturing platform called the EntoEngine to be the first synthetic biology system to use fruit flies for recombinant protein production.

The startup will use the funds raised to hire key personnel and build out its first production facility, which will enable the production of recombinant proteins at kilogram scale. The facility will produce proteins for cell culture with a smaller greenhouse gas footprint than existing bioreactor technology.

“Biotechnology is bubbling with innovation, but to date, little funding has gone to biomanufacturing production infrastructure at scale. Traditional bioreactors are expensive, wasteful, and capacity-limited,” said Jim Adler, founder and general partner of Toyota Ventures, in a statement. “It is time for disruptive innovation. We applaud Future Fields’ cost-effective, sustainable, and scalable biomanufacturing platform to fuel biotechnology’s next life-saving inventions.”