twig emerges from stealth with £3m in funding, to create a new bioengineering powerhouse in the UK

Published: September 2023

The new start-up will harness an AI-first approach to develop eco-friendly alternatives to everyday ingredients in consumer goods.

11th September 2023, London, UK: twig, a new bioengineering start-up which uses artificial intelligence to develop sustainable alternatives to ingredients found in everyday consumer items, has emerged from stealth with an initial £3m of funding.

The start-up aims to disrupt the bioengineering industry through a game-changing, AI-first approach, in which the tech drives the direction of the science. Within conventional bioengineering companies, developing potential ingredient strains can take between 4-10 years and cost millions, with no guarantees of success, but this new approach slashes timings to mere months, at a fraction of the usual cost outlay.

This approach will create affordable, scalable, and sustainable ingredients, created through biofermentation, that producers can use in the everyday items the world relies on. These ingredients will replace environmentally harmful chemicals and ingredients such as acetone, palm oil or isoprene, which are typically produced from fossil fuels, or hyper intensive farming.

Investors in this seed round include high profile names such as Project A, Seedcamp, Zero Carbon Capital, UK Innovation and Science Seed Fund, Gaingels and several expert angels, rolled up through HackCapital.

The company is founded by Dr. Russ Tucker (who previously founded UK cultivated meat pioneer Ivy Farm), Dr. James Allen and Dr. Satnam Surae, and is based in King’s Cross, London. Together the three founders bring commercial, scientific and tech expertise to provide a fully rounded solution to the market.

Since its beginnings in late 2022, twig has grown to a team of ten and has already tested thousands of strains through their automated platform in just five short months in the lab.

On the announcement, Dr. Russ Tucker, co-founder of twig said:

“Many of the biggest little ingredients that go into the products we use in our daily lives are hugely damaging for the planet. This needs to change, and this needs to happen fast. twig is bioengineering better – through the right combination of AI and automation, we can deliver a step-change in bioengineering, driving a global transition from unsustainably resourced ingredients to bio-fermented ingredients in a way that benefits everyone – people, producers, and the planet.”

Lead investor, Malin Posern, Partner at Project A Ventures said:

Geoff Winkett said:

“We’re excited to be leading twig’s fundraise and to work with this exceptional founding team. twig is combining AI and SynBio in a novel way, to bioengineer the world’s most used ingredients – making them safe and sustainable.”

George Freeman MP, Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, said:

Geoff Winkett said:

“The work being done here in the UK by companies like twig – combining bioscience with AI and agritech – is further proof of engineering biology’s potential to solve some of the biggest sustainability challenges we face, and unlock economic growth and job creation nationwide in a UK technology.

That is why the Government is supporting the £3 million backing for twig as part of our long-term engineering biology industrial strategy.

The scope for innovations in engineering biology to boost our quality of life, our environment and our prosperity is precisely why we have earmarked it as one of the 5 technologies that are critical to the UK’s future.”

How twig works

The unique process utilises AI to radically improve the speed and efficacy of lab-based bioengineering, and can be broken down into three distinct tech pillars:

Bio:Builder

A best-in-class biological tool that allows twig to create the building blocks to develop its new sustainable ingredients.

Grow:Bot

Dependable, programmable and scalable robotics. Thanks to this, twig can manipulate and analyse tens of thousands of bacteria variations each month.

ML:Bridge

twig’s AI that connects the dots across the ever-growing standardised and formatted data library generated by Bio:Builder and Grow:Bot. ML:Bridge reviews production yields against target thresholds and recommends pathway improvements. It shows us the way to get better results.

About twig

twig is a bioengineering company delivering sustainable ingredients that don’t cost the earth.

We’re using AI to radically improve the speed and efficacy of lab-based bioengineering, creating affordable, scalable, and dependable ingredients that producers can use in the everyday items the world relies on – without compromise.

It’s a game-changing, AI-defined approach to bioengineering in which the tech drives the direction of the science. No gut instincts, preconceptions, or the pressure to meet short-term service contracts – just rapid, incisive data analysis to signpost the best answers to some of the planet’s most pressing sustainability problems.

By letting the AI do the talking about which ingredients to explore, we can prioritise the ingredients that can be delivered at scale, with high dependability and yield, and make vast strides towards delivering sustainable ingredients that we know will change the world.

With each successful ingredient created, we lay the groundwork for the next one, our tech platform becoming more powerful with every experiment and every data input.

Our approach can drive a global transition from unsustainably resourced ingredients to bio-fermented ingredients in a way that benefits everyone – people, producers, and the planet.