At a small networking event, the founders said softly to us: “we are working on a technology that can completely upend the entire sequencing industry.” We leaned in to listen; after all, the founders have been working the front lines during every major pivotal point in sequencing history: Illumina’s acquisition of Solexa in 2001, the introduction of HiSeq (2010) and Novaseq (2017) which redefined the meaning of “high-throughput,” and when Ultima’s UG100 unshackled us from flow cells. Stream goes further, to untie us from library preps, from amplification, and from the massive computational overhead of imaging-based sequencing.

Their technology leverages a proprietary method that can monitor chemical incorporations in real time, leading to 1000-fold reduction in compute, and up to 100-fold increase in speed than the technologies we have today. The best part: the sequencer itself is an order of magnitude cheaper, which solves the switching cost for customers. The engineer, scientist, and commercialization leaders on the executive team have a combined 60+ years of experience at major competitors, including Illumina, PacBio, and Ultima. We believe that SPEED will unlock and expand markets like what Netflix did to Blockbuster, what PCs did to supercomputers, what Amazon 2-day delivery did to retail, and this is the team to execute it.

Athos Bio is developing bio-mineralization technology that mitigates this waste, transforming it into a medium for permanent carbon storage and the recovery of valuable mineral commodities. The team uses microbial consortia to drive efficient mineralization reactions at ambient temperatures and pressures in bioreactors, overcoming the pitfalls of energy-intensive mineralization technologies.

Athos’s bio-mineralization process can sequester three metric tons of CO₂ per four tons of mafic feedstocks (i.e., silicate rocks rich in magnesium and iron) while producing three tons of carbonates and other mineral products. Carbonates, normally mined at significant environmental cost, are used in cosmetics, food production, pharmaceuticals, and building materials, among other things. Down the road, Athos aims to recover nickel, zinc, copper, gold, platinum, and more from mining waste.

Athos Bio was founded by Gabriel Villar, Matt LaRosa, and Liz Muntean, who previously worked together in the AgTech space. They have extensive experience with developing functional microbial consortia solutions. At IndieBio, they are screening microbes for functional chemistry, assembling and testing consortia, and prototyping a reactor for their bio-mineralization process. At scale, their work could turn mining waste into a valuable commodity, all while fighting climate change.

ArgenTag has developed the first truly scalable single-cell solution for long-read sequencers.

The company has fundamentally changed the economics of single-cell sequencing. ArgenTag has supplanted previous methodologies utilizing expensive Next-Generation sequencers, by enabling single-cell sequencing to be performed on cheaper 3rd generation long-read DNA sequencers. This paradigm shift will allow the democratization of single-cell sequencing that has hitherto been the preserve of well-funded laboratories. This powerful tool in the hands of the many will profoundly affect how biomedical research is performed, and will enable the invention of a myriad of new long-read applications.

FluoSphera is developing the first liquid microphysiological systems (MPS) ever made to revolutionize drug discovery. The MPS of FluoSphera recapitulates the complex organization of the human body in vitro by mimicking the communications between multiple human organs. These smart tools thus predict the effects of candidate drugs much better, even before they reach the first patient, to stop missing the most promising drugs.

With this powerful technology, FluoSphera helps to increase the success rate in clinical trials while proposing superior alternatives to animal experimentation.

Inso Bio envisions a future of increased accessibility, where complex sample prep protocols are completed from start to finish with the push of a button. This is why we are developing next-generation platforms to streamline workflows leading up to sequencing, to give people more time to devote to science, discovery, and data, rather than wrestling with their samples.

And they do it way faster than anyone else in the world. Wayfinder is WAY faster.

A spinout from the Center for Synthetic Biology at the University of Washington, Wayfinder has internal programs in oncology and unique technologies to unlock RNA drugging.