Top Synthetic Biology Startups in 2026

Synonym is a financing and development platform for essential biomanufacturing infrastructure - we’re building production capacity for synthetic biology companies and creating a new asset class for investors. We provide synbio companies with flexible capacity for microbial fermentation.  We build new biomanufacturing facilities, offering synbio companies access to dedicated, scalable capacity for minimal upfront capital investment. We accelerate project timelines and minimize internal complexity by handling facility development activities, from site selection through commissioning. We provide capital markets partners with curated access to biomanufacturing infrastructure investments, an emerging asset class and we manage these investments on behalf of investors, with an emphasis on risk management and maximizing returns.

Volta Labs was spun out of MIT in 2018 with the simple mission of building biological automation from the ground up. Volta is in the proximity of Kendall Square, known as "the most innovative square mile on the planet". Being part of the open biotech culture in Kendall Square made us realize that today’s biologists are held back by the limitations of existing automation tools. With DNA sequencing in particular, we observed that the advances in DNA readout technologies had moved further along than the advances in the upstream steps of preparing samples for sequencing (sample prep). ‍ What started out as a simple printed circuit board to manipulate colored droplets at the MIT Media Lab during co-founder Udayan Umapathi’s graduate work was quickly directed toward solving the “sample prep bottleneck”. The company raised Seed Funding from top VCs in 2019 and later that year added Will Langford as a co-founder and Head of Engineering. ‍ Since then, we have been heads down in the lab inventing and building novel fluidic and sample manipulation technologies. We take an anti-disciplinary approach to solve very hard problems and weave together instrumentation, fluidics, software, biology and chemistry. While our current focus is on sequencing sample prep, we envision a new approach where a single universal machine automates most biological workflows in genomics, proteomics and synthetic biology.

We use synthetic biology to make biosensor plants. Our plants detect fungi, insect, and general stress within hours of infection and generate an artificial signal that is read via remote sensor technologies. Our customers are companies in the grain supply chain from agro-chemical companies, to growers, all the way to food processors.

At IndieBio, we are committed to building a future where biology is not only a field of study, but a technology that will help solve our world’s most challenging problems. We are part of SOSV, one of the world's top early-stage investors, and our three-month programs are designed to put founders side-by-side every day with technical experts as well as provide $500,000 in capital to ensure a fast start for world shaping ideas. Graduates of IndieBio benefit from the remarkable IndieBio community as well as well as ongoing SOSV investment through A, B and later rounds. We have locations in New York City and San Francisco. If you are driven to change the world around you, then stop waiting: APPLY NOW!

Mammoth biosciences is harnessing the diversity of nature to power the next generation of crispr products. through its discovery of novel crispr systems, the company is enabling the full potential of its platform to read and write the code of life. with a distinguished team including co-founder and crispr-cas gene editing co-inventor jennifer doudna, mammoth is addressing challenges across healthcare, agriculture, environmental monitoring, biodefense, and more.