102. Waste into WOW! Cemvita's Moji Karimi on Turning Carbon Problems into Golden Opportunities

[00:00:04] Erum: Moji, Karimi, we are so happy to have you on the Grow Everything podcast. Thank you for joining us today.

[00:00:12] Moji: Absolutely. I've been excited about this. Thanks for the invite.

[00:00:15] Erum: Yeah, of course. I've been thinking about some VEDA some time in the work that you guys do, and I wanted to learn more about the person behind all of this person, the team, because I know it takes large village. But yeah, you have a very impressive background. So does your sister.

[00:00:32] Erum: So you and your sister co founded Zemvita, but what inspired both of you to start this company? And how did your background in petroleum engineering and her background in biotechnology converge to create this venture?

[00:00:47] Moji: Sure. And actually that, is the essence of Sembida and for Sembida to exist, trying to do what we do could not have happened any other way. so, my background started off in the energy industry, but I've always been passionate about multidisciplinary sciences and just innovation in general.

[00:01:04] Moji: And I realized that in my own career. It started, in R& D, but I kept asking questions about what is the business model? What's the big picture? And grew in that direction throughout time. eventually I got more, interested in the startups and the company that I was so lucky to join was a company that wanted to commercialize DNA sequencing in the subsurface.

[00:01:25] Moji: looking at DNA of microbes in the oil and water and rock and building this kind of a 23 and me type maps for the subsurface. and our main investor was Illumina and that's how as a petroleum engineer, that was my introduction to biotech. once I got into that, I realized this whole world of possibilities, sequencing, just being a tool, but the bigger tool being bioengineering.

[00:01:49] Moji: Again, I was lucky that around that time, kind of 2012 13, Tara just so happened that she moved to Houston. background is all the way biochemistry and synthetic biology. She's two PhDs, two postdocs in the field. when she moved to Houston, she was doing a tissue engineering project with MD Anderson and Texas Heart Institute.

[00:02:11] Moji: So, we've never imagined that our worlds would have an overlap because I'm going to drilling rigs. She's going to like hospitals in lab coats and stuff. but the DNA sequencing part of what I was doing became the linkage where I shared with her, this is what I'm doing. And, she's told me about DNA sequencing in more depth.

[00:02:30] Moji: And that became the start of longer organic conversations where we both arrived at the conclusion that There's a lot of potential in, biotech and bioengineering, and there's a lot of problems to solve in the energy industry and heavy industries in general. So who's going to do that?

[00:02:46] Moji: Who's going to do this translation and find what are the applications that make sense and know how to pitch it to the traditional industries. so that's what. We've said to do the beginning, we did not know what those applications are typically the advice is find the problem and then go become an expert in that and find the solution.

[00:03:04] Moji: We're just so excited about industry biotech that we said, let's start. We'll figure out what the applications are. And that's what happened, across the past seven years.

[00:03:13] Karl: one of the things that your technology does, and you'll tell us, is it synthetic biology? Is it biotech? But one of the things that it does is it transforms carbon dioxide emissions into valuable chemicals. Can you tell us how that process maybe differs from traditional carbon capture and storage?

[00:03:31] Karl: And was that what you guys set out to do at the beginning of Simvita?

[00:03:35] Moji: Yeah, at the very beginning, we started with CO2 utilization. actually at the beginning, we also were using a photosynthetic pathway, to avoid having to use hydrogen, which is a bigger challenge for CO2 utilization in general. and using light as a source. Initially, because the cost drivers that we see today, they were not here as far as the interest in low carbon molecules.

[00:03:59] Moji: So we found an application actually in aerospace for using the CO2 that astronauts breathe out and converting that Through our bioreactor, into, glucose, as a source of calories. So it was a closed life support system, if you could call it. we had one or two projects that, we got support for, and that was the beginning, but then as we built a platform, we moved in the direction of energy transition in this, coincided with 2018, 1920, where this wave came through where companies, became more and more interested in investing in, CO2 utilization.

[00:04:31] Moji: Or, higher volume, lower value, you could say more of an intermediate commodity type, applications. the way that is different is that believe that CO2 should be used as a feeder stock, as opposed to only be viewed as this waste that will have to be sequestered. part of the reason for that is if you think long term, you have to spend money to sequester the CO2.

[00:04:54] Moji: so you see companies doing that today. A lot of that is. underpinned by 45Q in the US. So, if if it's, from initial source capture, you get 85. If it's by direct air capture, you get 180, and that sunsets in about 12 years. And so beyond that, what is the incentive for these big companies to keep doing that, Whereas if you could use CO2, as part of a process and deliver some sort of value on the back end and create revenue. and fine tune the process. Now you've given the industry something that they're going to keep doing more of on their own without needing to rely on a government. So that's the policy, part of this.

[00:05:33] Moji: And then the other part of it is if you look at nature, CO2 is used in many processes. So when are we as humans going to learn from that and be able to engineer solutions at a scale that could do the same thing? to solve the issue that we have with CO2 on one hand, on the other hand, create more of a low carbon, molecules for everything that we need and fuels as well.

[00:05:51] Erum: Yeah. you mentioned your project in the aerospace with astronauts, CO2 and making that into glucose. And that piques my interest because I love space. I just love thinking about it. So very, very cool. You also mentioned some other applications. and we talked about this before we started recording about, different applications and energy mining and aerospace.

[00:06:12] Erum: And, this is, challenge that a lot of companies have been facing in the space, where some are looking at becoming a platform. Versus creating products. And, I know that you guys have been navigating this very well, but of course there's challenges. Can you talk a little bit to this?

[00:06:28] Erum: Because I think, whatever you're going to say could be a great clip to share with all of these other entrepreneurs who struggle at this interception platform versus product.

[00:06:38] Moji: Yeah, then honestly, that's been the most fun part for me of the past seven years is navigating around this exact thing, in a way that they continue. when we started, the vision that we had was, Industry biotech for energy transition. it's very broad, Both on the industry biotech side of it and then on the energy transition is also very broad.

[00:06:59] Moji: our thesis was that there are applications where it makes sense and it's economical to deploy new solutions today. We found three of those applications. One was for subsurface by manufacturing of natural hydrogen. Basically, I mentioned that early on I was studying DNA of microbes in the subsurface, And I'm a petroleum engineer. in the oil and gas industry, there's a lot of legacy for microbiology, but most of it is focused around sulfate reducing bacteria that produce H2S. And H2S is bad news because it sours reservoir, it corrodes the pipes. So there is a huge body of work in the oil and gas industry in using biocides to kill SRVs, but through that, they have microbiologists working for these companies, but they're all just trying to kill the microbes.

[00:07:45] Moji: So we asked the question, and Tara asked the question, are there good microbes that we could use? and how do we try to solve this problem with Optimized for biology, as opposed to just trying to use chemicals the industry has been doing with biocides. So one of those applications became, can we in situ produce hydrogen in the subsurface and use the reservoir, the porous.

[00:08:07] Moji: space in the reservoir as the bioreactor. so we continue to develop that solution into a full package. We tested it in the Permian basin. and eventually we're getting deeper and deeper into the vertical, for the subsurface while we're trying to build a platform, which is a matrix.

[00:08:25] Moji: just put a pin on that. This is one part of the story. The other application we found was in the mining industry. , this one is easier to think about because, I realized that about 15 percent of the world copper today is produced with microbes. And this was a big surprise to me, in a process called bio leaching.

[00:08:44] Moji: where they remove the copper ore and they stack them up in a heap leach, you could traditionally use something like sulfuric acid to leach out the copper, but you could also use microbes, that do about the same thing, and that's bi leaching. So big companies, like BHP and Rio and others, they've been doing this for about 50 years.

[00:09:02] Moji: But the way that they've done it is being more, what is called like a bucket microbiology where there is a culture, they isolate and they pass on between the different assets. And the question was, okay, well, we have a lot more tools now, who is going to really upgrade this process to much better understanding of the performance in the micro of the consortia, to continue to maintain the recovery, So that became that core application. and that also quickly started to go deep into the mining vertical, we had that second application and the third one was the one we already talked about, using carbon streams, for by manufacturing of low carbon chemicals.

[00:09:37] Moji: So we had these three applications. All three, the markets, they're not mature for using biotech. So let's say if you're Ginkgo, you could engineer a microbe and just give it to Pfizer and they say, Oh, thank you very much. We take it from here. They know what to do with it because they have the same capability, but mining industry doesn't oil and gas industry doesn't chemical industry doesn't.

[00:09:59] Moji: so what happens is they will pull you in to have to also a scale and develop the application. And that's where the challenge happens because you have to decide, are you going to stay at the top, closer to the platform, or are you going to get pulled down to developing the product? And you can do both.

[00:10:15] Moji: one of our board members says this, like people love platforms. Once they're done, once they're built, they're amazing. But the process of making them is extremely challenging running a matrix organization, allowing for sharing of the resources between different applications, where the applications start to have different needs, different type of analytical testing that is required starts to become really expensive.

[00:10:37] Moji: The same time we had this other issue, which was quite interesting, say for our series A and series B. We had investors who would say, love the mining application, not into hydrogen, love the CO2 use case, not into mining, so can I just invest in that? And before it's like, well, this is a full package, you just have to, buy into the big vision.

[00:10:57] Moji: and we did pull that off actually for our series A to some degree for our series B. but as those companies were becoming more mature, we realized really the better pathway. is to unleash the mining and oil and gas application so that they could develop their team, raise money from specific investors to that industry so they could run far.

[00:11:17] Moji: And so we made the decision to spin out those two companies. And today they have their own CEO, they have their own PNL, and board members, investors and everything. And so that left us with Zambita. And the use case for carbon waste to sustainable oil application.

[00:11:32] Karl: Wow. that is amazing. you mentioned a lot of things, but one of the things that I took away from it is, you pioneered using natural hydrogen and other subsurface applications. What opportunities are you seeing in the space and how has the spinning off of those two verticals helped you focus on that?

[00:11:52] Moji: yeah, so the big picture was we. Believed in in situ by manufacturing in saying that a lot of the legacy of what we have done to date has been based on doing things inside the bioreactor that we built on surface, whereas in reality, a lot of these reactions are already happening in nature, outcome of which we're enjoying, whether if it's oil and gas that we were extracting or, minerals and metals that through the use of microbes have been liberated. It's a different way of thinking. It's environmental microbiology meets in situ biotech, and then you could get into the symbiotic part of this, even if it's more like a adaptive evolution or Directed evolution as opposed to like hardcore, GMO. so in those two industries, we found this use cases, one of which, in mining, it was already done.

[00:12:38] Moji: So it was more about, can you use this microbe instead of that one? Or can you use these tools to monitor what is already being done? And honestly, I just think about people who first did this, they're the true innovators. And it's so odd that we've done the, actual big innovation, but now some companies could be resistant to making improvements to the same thing that they have pioneered.

[00:13:00] Moji: It's a weird thing. I call it the pioneers paradox that pioneers suffer from the same issue because they were pioneers. on the mining side and the oil and gas side, the same way, the thinking was, why are we going and extracting this natural resource of, hydrocarbons And then what these companies are doing, they plug and abandon that reservoir and move on to the next one. But you've done all this work to get access to the subsurface. And when they leave, they still have, 10, 20, sometimes 50 percent of the original oil that is unrecovered. So we said, it could be think of this as a natural subsurface feedstock. And instead of hydrocarbons and could be envision a future where you could have on the ground by refineries where you could integrate downstream with upstream, because if you think about today, product doesn't change the whole oil and gas industry is about finding where the oil is drilling to get to it and then bring it out.

[00:13:52] Moji: And then pipelines send it to petrochemical downstream and say, okay, now you guys turn this into useful things. But now we have this understanding that maybe we could go to the source in the subsurface and actually convert the oil and gas into other things that we need. hydrogen, is an example with the work that we did with gold hydrogen.

[00:14:08] Moji: So that requires a much deeper understanding of environmental microbiology and in what ways can we actually, control that and scale it. These two, were the applications that we developed. We did come across many other applications as well, in different industries. actually, we did this study, through a foresight framework, which is what futurists use. To envision what those applications are. Anything from self-healing concrete to, very efficient, microbial fuel cells, to, biological data storage and computing. There's different examples that we could learn from nature this is really Tara's strength is biomimicry, is looking at the natural system and to re-engineer it in ways that they could scale it into commercial application.

[00:14:50] Moji: My job that is like, well, how do we make money from that? And what's the business model? How do we explain it? And that's why this has worked so well with the two of us working together closely. but the focus part came in because, was like running three companies at the same time, and it's very challenging.

[00:15:05] Moji: They have different development, stages, the industries, the three of them moved at different speed. Investor profile was different. And even though could share this, I was hopeful that we'll come across investors that saw the big vision to say, want to see you through this. Let's go and develop this.

[00:15:23] Moji: And we'll support to have a bigger, network or support system to be able to do it at the end is tough. so, we decided to spinning the two out is a better path though. Semida maintains equity ownership in the two different amounts. very happy with that and continue to support those companies.

[00:15:41] Moji: we call them, it's like our children who has grown up and now they've gone to college and they have now their own apartment and offices and stuff. So I'm happy for them. And I work closely with Liz and under live prop on, gold hydrogen side. And in the future we could even collaborate together, even do business together.

[00:15:58] Karl: Yeah, I think it's super interesting what you say about, the people let's just talk about the copper leaching using microbes And i've probably said this on the podcast before we've had a lonely on alone.

[00:16:09] Karl: It does environmental remediation and we had looked at, what's the innovations in the mining industry. And there's like reports out there that I ended up reading and biomanufacturing or biotech was not a part of those reports, which I was really surprised by. And, maybe at this point, those reports are dated a few years.

[00:16:26] Karl: So hearing you say you had very specific people, very specific who were interested, but the, customers still unsure because they have a process in place, even though you could make it potentially, 10 X, 100 X, 1000 X more efficient and localize it. I find that to be super, super interesting.

[00:16:45] Moji: It is, and as much of a technical conversation as cultural, the, big companies, sometimes they're not structured to, incentivize motivation or people taking risk, which is something we already know. but I think the breakthrough comes from. When you have people who work, say, in the oil and gas industry, they go learn about biotech and companies that are doing this that are based in, say, Houston or places where there are the hubs and this merger that happens, Because it's going to take some time, to educate, to get up to speed. And we've seen this in real time, in the work that we do, for example, with Oxy, Oxy is our biggest investor to date, and we work with them very closely. I mean, these are some of the smartest chemical engineers in the world, So we started working together. And we know when it's going to be a good relationship where no one says, Oh, well, this is over my head. I don't know about biotech. They just ask first principle based questions, They just keep asking to go deeper because at the end, it's all chemistry, and try to understand it from the bottom up.

[00:17:42] Moji: the relationship started that way. And then said, Hey, Tara, can you, do a course for us? a synthetic biology one on one. And Tara did that, about, four or five years ago. And today, if you go to a meeting that we have with Oxy, their engineers are asking about, well, what plasmid are we using here?

[00:17:58] Moji: They could read a lot of the analytical testing, the data, and they love it because it's a whole new world. what they told us, their chief process engineer is like, once I understood that inside the cell is like a chemical plant. The light bulb went off. like the pathways and the possibilities.

[00:18:14] Moji: And they're so amazed by, by manufacturing and microbial capability to be very precise. Because they're used to, if you use ethane to make ethane, you're also going to get propane. You're also going to get all this, which is why they have all this fractionation columns. And something that there's very used to, Same with the high pressure, high temperature, operations. it's been great to create this new way of communication. And I think to your point, once more and more of this happens is where, In the reports like that, it would inherently include biotech, not as something weird that maybe we could use, but as something that is already, part of the

[00:18:49] Moji: / solution. .

[00:18:51] Erum: Yeah, that's, again, very incredible. so I want to go back to this idea of spinning out, Zambita has positioned itself to be a startup for startups. so now there's the different business lines you mentioned, Gold H2 or Gold Hydrogen and Endolith. these are, spinning out their own, They graduated from Zambita and live on their own.

[00:19:11] Erum: So do you see more spin outs happening? and these are run by different CEOs, of course, is thisa model that will happen? Because again, you mentioned several applications. I'm curious to hear your, thoughts on more startups.

[00:19:25] Moji: No, it's a great question. and the answer is that we do not intend to do that. We did that so that we could focus on commercializing our core application. Now, once we do that, a few years down the road, we have operational plans and making revenue. I do have a vision along with Tara to create what we call almost like a future lapse, where we think about other problems, in the industry that maybe one way for bringing those to life would be through, a spin out type or JVs or different type of collaboration.

[00:19:54] Moji: And now we have a bit of experience doing that. But for a company to try to do this as their core business model. it would require different kind of investors because now you're telling investors that invest in us because we're going to spin out other startups as opposed to the core application.

[00:20:10] Moji: And it would change you, from a actual biotech company that is going to solve the problem into more of a incubator, system. So could be done, but it's a different business model. And right now we're doing engineering work for our first commercial plants, fundraising for that.

[00:20:25] Moji: And everything is geared towards that. The other thing is, when we went from platform to product, we have to, redo our org chart because before we

[00:20:34] Moji: had capabilities end to end, like by prospecting, analytical services, fermentation, synthetic biology, techno economic assessment, all of those things.

[00:20:43] Moji: And they were servicing three business units, When we did a spin out, we made some decisions in terms of, okay, maybe this person makes more sense to go to GoldH2 or to Endolith. And then we had to decide, okay, does Senvita still need bioprospecting? Because that was more of a need for those two who are like environmental as opposed to what we do, because of that, ended up calling Senvita 2. Which was our version of the rebirth. so that doesn't have the same platform capabilities. It's more focused around the core application.

[00:21:12] Karl: Now, you talked about your relationship with oxy, being one of your biggest partners this is, with some Vita and then you also have alliance with United Airlines. what are the strategies that you use to build those relationships and how do you sustain them going forward?

[00:21:27] Moji: Yeah. I mean, there has to be synergies, with their mission in the case of oxy, there's a lot of focus on CO2. and they, build in this big, direct air capture plant in a permanent basin plan to build a lot more. a lot of that is to be sequestered and they do have some EOR operations.

[00:21:43] Moji: but they still very much believe in CO2 conversion as a category. so through Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, they've made investments in Sembita, a few other companies to help develop those pathways that could convert CO2 into valuable products. so that's the body of work that we do with them. One thing that sometimes people don't know about Oxy is that When people think Oxy, they think Permian Basin, oil and gas, drilling, but they also have OxyChem, which is a downstream part of Oxy, it's a chemical company, basically, and a lot of the people that we work with actually are in OxyChem, so they have the capabilities, a lot of the, Oxy is the number one producer VCM in North America, which is what is used to make PVC.

[00:22:26] Moji: that's a surprise when we learned about that. So CO2 conversion when it comes to United, it's quite different. that one is about sustainable aviation fuel. I'm sure you guys have covered at length. if you look at what is going on with SAF, the number one way. About 95 percent of SAF that's produced today is through this HEPA process, how to treat it, esters and fatty acids. So HEPA process uses, vegetables, animal fat, and used coquinol as a feedstock. And if you look at projections for all those three things combined, it's flat from here because, you can't envision, ways that out of a sudden we're just gonna have a lot more animal fat or, used coquinol, and there's a lot more demand. On those feeder stocks the same time, there is a lot more need for SAF and companies have committed and projections by 2030, but 2040 in Europe is even more aggressive. So they did was, okay, if we need more SAF, HEPA is the main way to make it. What is holding HEPA back availability of feeder stock?

[00:23:26] Moji: What does Senvita make? This. Oil profile that we could make from carbon waste. And this oil profile is very similar to vegetable oils that could be used in the HEPA process. So we basically create this drop in for the HEPA process that helps ease some of the pain for availability of the feeder stock.

[00:23:45] Moji: So that's why they invested in some beta. That's why they did the offtake with us. eventually there was a pathway to also go from CO2 to the same oil. which is a way to make it even lower carbon. but we're not limited by that. We found other carbon waste streams to be able to fast track the process and produce oil, within the next few years.

[00:24:03] Moji: but that's what we're planning with our first commercial plant.

[00:24:07] Erum: Okay. remind me what a HEPA process is. does HEPA stand for?

[00:24:11] Moji: It's a hydrotreated esters and fatty acids. hydrotreating for the most part. it's a process that you vegetable oil and other fats and greases goes in. And then, SAF basically comes out. There's more blending that happens on the back end, but it's primarily the way to make SAF. Outside of that, there is, e fuels through a lot of companies in that space, through electrochemistry.

[00:24:36] Karl: just for our readers who don't know, SAF is Sustainable Aviation Fuels.

[00:24:41] Moji: Yeah. Because if you think about, the challenge that aviation industry has for decarbonization, unlike you could drive a Tesla instead of your normal car, but, we're, years out from being able to reliably fly electric planes, long distance or hydrogen planes. So the way for them to decarbonize is to decarbonize the fuel and be able to use the same airplanes with the same engines.

[00:25:05] Karl: Yeah, and you mentioned, decarbonization and that seems to be one of the big themes for some Vita decarbonizing and transforming, heavy industry. So how do you think about navigating the balance between you guys are very innovative? These companies have existing infrastructures.

[00:25:22] Karl: What kind of strategies do you guys have to use to persuade these traditional legacy big industries to adopt these biotech solutions?

[00:25:32] Moji: So there's a few things, I would say though, honestly, if I've learned one thing is that it's not about convincing, it has to make sense to them. And the number one way of making sure that it makes sense to them is, if you could have cost parity to what they're doing, so that you make the sustainability part more of a bonus, in the equation, as opposed to demanding large premiums, that's where the convincing comes in and persuading, which is challenging.

[00:25:58] Moji: but as part of that, we've also become more targeted When I had more of a convincing approach, we talked to everybody and we try to convince them. it was like self inflicting pain, Because a lot of times they were not, and you're like, why don't they get it? Why don't they want to be sustainable?

[00:26:14] Moji: But in reality, there is only, two to 5 percent of companies who truly are thinking about the future. beyond the next quarter or whatnot, who truly thinking about, technology breakthroughs and have the right structure, right champions inside the organization to help. So most of the time it's just like finding, to make sure we're spending time in that 5 percent category instead of trying to hope 20 percent instead of, because it's not something that I control.

[00:26:42] Moji: The other thing that I found, is helpful, and this is truly what we believe, is that it's not just about decarbonization. As a matter of fact, that's one of the problems because right now everything is so indexed on CO2 emissions that sometimes that comes at the penalty of, the environment in ways that it's not measured. The same stuff thing is an example, who is to say if you cut down trees in the Amazon to plant soybean farms and then squeeze the oil out to make stuff is a better way than just using hydrocarbons, one creates emissions, the other one has impact on nature. And it's biodiversity, it's water use, it's land use, it's fertilizer use.

[00:27:19] Moji: so historically, a lot of times the view has been, if it's not oil and gas, it must be great. And now, we're realizing that everything has good and bad. Same with mining. electrification, batteries, they take cobalt, they take lithium, all of that, So, today we don't have a framework that allows us to compare these holistically.

[00:27:38] Moji: when we come for solution A versus B, and I've asked a lot of smart people and they just say, look, man, this is complex. We have, this carbon thing we could measure. Let's just focus on that. but it's nagging in my brain because I know that it's not right. if we just do it based on carbon.

[00:27:54] Moji: What I'm hoping is that we have COP30 coming up in Brazil, it's going to have a huge focus on biodiversity. So I'm hoping that by then we'll have more frameworks that helps companies make more informed decisions. And us as people make better decisions when it comes to climate. Decarbonization, as opposed to protecting nature, and this is exactly where I think biotech could have a lot to say.

[00:28:16] Moji: Honestly, when these companies are today, you're doing what they call nature based solutions, and a lot of it is planting trees and things like that. You know, what's an elegant nature based solution is bioleaching. It's subsurface biorefineries is learning from nature and reengineering and scaling that and there's more opportunities to do it that way, which I hope that, companies go in that direction.

[00:28:38] Erum: Yeah. so for the COP30, the climate change conference in Brazil, I think is brilliant. I mean, it's definitely a statement saying, let's ensure that we have biodiversity as part of this conversation. And I've been to a few biodiversity summits, and there's an effort to put a price on biodiversity, just as There's a price on carbon and I don't want this to be a conversation about carbon credits, but We're starting to learn more and, like you're saying, we don't need to have monoculturing to be a solution because that's actually really bad. especially when we think about, this podcast is about biology, the beauty of biology, the diversity of biology, and how can we learn, Not extract or exploit or manipulate the very, very harsh terms, but to honor and to, learn from and to mimic, I think that's, something that I'm glad guys are thinking about and also taking into consideration as you grow your company. Very, very good. I also, wanted to, Think about the space overall, We've had a few people, a few companies on this podcast that are converting carbon emissions into products. so, they're a company called Solar Foods making proteins from carbon. Obviously, Lanzatec making a whole bunch of things. platform, product, whatever you want to call it. they're going to different industries as well.

[00:29:57] Erum: So my question to you is you're talking about carbon conversion into products. how are you differentiating it? Is it in the micro section of it? Is it saying Hey, look, We need all solutions all at once. could be similar as another company, but we're doing it because we need these solutions.

[00:30:15] Erum: I'd love to know a little bit more about you, look at Zinvita fitting into the ecosystem of carbon capture and utilization or converting carbon emissions.

[00:30:25] Moji: Yeah, absolutely. So there are four specific things. Number one is that we use carbon waste as a feedstock. that's different in this space that we're in, because we converted into an oil profile because we found that to be a very versatile platform, you mentioned lines of tech for them.

[00:30:43] Moji: That's ethanol,

[00:30:44] Moji: for example, For us is this oil profile, and we use carbon waste to make it. And there's companies in that space, like Amaris, like so as I'm. others that have used sugar, and sugar, of course you could do it, but becomes a cost issue and some of the environmental penalties that comes with sugar also cannot be understated.

[00:31:02] Moji: So we, we specialize in finding carbon waste streams, and this could be from different industries, from the same biofuel industry, from agriculture, from food. now get into the second part. differentiation is the optimization engineering that we've done on our microbial library to be able to use variety of carbon waste as a feedstock.

[00:31:21] Moji: We do have one particular one that is our launch feedstock. but for anyone who's linked into this space, lot of your technical economic is going to rely on your cost of feedstock, so that is going to be different if you're going to pull the plant, say in the U S as opposed to Brazil, as opposed to in Thailand.

[00:31:38] Moji: So it does call for that local understanding of what is the carbon waste stream that's available at low cost. So the engineered microbes was the second part of this. the third part is the way we think about a scale up is different. it's almost like forgetting everything that we know about biotech and building plants that look more like, renewable natural gas, anaerobic digestion type, plants, very much low capex, in the way that the bioreactors in design and the overall system, very much not what you think of pharma or uh, high end food type processing.

[00:32:11] Moji: and that's where we saw the opportunity because a lot of we need those things so that we could accommodate. weak microbes. we're trying to make more robust microbes so that we could remove the burden from the CAPEX, for things like contamination, for example. so lowering the CAPEX is extremely important in that equation, as much as finding, low cost fetus stocks, So, few members of our team, that's their main focus, and we have our own process engineers and chemical engineers doing our own modeling and working with the APC company. But focusing on that low capex is huge. And then the last part is the downstream process. This product that we're making does require, it's not extracellular, just like excretion.

[00:32:52] Moji: So we have to go through a process to extract the product. And we've created a pathway, to not use solvents in the process. It's more of modified mechanical process. This was a big deal for us. We even did a personal lease about it. so that downstream process is a huge part also is lowering the cost.

[00:33:09] Moji: You keep hearing me talking about lowering the cost because this is the only way this is going to scale. we have to get there, have line of sight to how we're going to get there. And when you add up this, four different equations they all help, So when you're custom beta compared to a lot of companies in this space, those things add up.

[00:33:25] Moji: And the way we think about scaling We are going to build our first commercial plant, but we want to focus on these four things that I mentioned. What we don't want to focus on is how to do massive capital projects, right now, and how to secure the supply chain for a lot of the feeder stocks and a lot of the end products, or trying to go into these verticals.

[00:33:44] Moji: and become, like a cosmetics company and a food company to then think that because we could do that and show people what's possible and market those products. that is going to create a version of the same platform issue that we already talked about, but on the back end, And people have done that before. Like if you look at swords, um, Amaris, which by the way, it's a a huge, we're really literally this space is like riding on the shoulder of giants. there's so much learning in this space. lot of things have changed. A lot of things haven't changed. So we want to make sure that if we make a mistake, it's not something that others have already learned the exact same way a few years ago.

[00:34:19] Moji: but those things were some of that differentiation in the way I see it.

[00:34:23] Erum: I have a quick follow up question. So you have a commercial plant that you're looking to launch, which is exciting. And just to understand, you guys are using waste carbon emissions. is it from oil and gas?

[00:34:35] Moji: no, not from oil and gas. we do have a pilot plant in Houston, which has been up and running since 2023 March. And we've used that to gallon scale of the product to send for testing to our partners because we want to make sure that What we make is a drop in into their process, as opposed to some customized thing that we think is going to do better, and then asking them to change their process.

[00:35:00] Moji: Xymergen tried that, with the molecule for a foldable screens and stuff, and that's very challenging to try to pull off.

[00:35:07] Moji: but the sources of the carbon waste, there's plenty actually of different sources, but sometimes there are the smaller amounts, like dairy farms, for example, biodiesel industry has other, streams that could be used, agriculture, the same thing.

[00:35:22] Moji: So, part of our team, it's almost this intersection with agribusiness, with, biotech, which has already been done when you look at, renewable natural gas, for example, With anaerobic digesters. so what we're trying to do is to link what we're doing to that. And instead of just being limited to CO2, because we do have a program around CO2.

[00:35:42] Moji: We're super excited about CO2. We have the right partners. We are going to do it, but it's also, hard to scale because you need hydrogen next to the CO2, So is that green? If so, what's the cost? If it's not green, what's the emissions that come with it? so because of the challenge, we said, okay, let's scale the pathway from carbon waste to the end product.

[00:36:01] Moji: And then eventually we tag along both. So we could go from CO2 to organic, intermediate, which we could feed into the same second reaction to make more product. so that gave us the flexibility because I think it's all about flexibility, both in terms of your feedstock. and in terms of, the profile through which you could make your end product, this is why we decided to be a feedstock company, as opposed to try to go a step further down and become, say, a SAF company, for example, like, say, LanzaJet did, off of, LanzaTech, so the flexibility I think is going to be key to maneuver around a lot of the price changes in the common years.

[00:36:38] Karl: Yeah, I'm super fascinated by this because, you talked about potential different way streams, agriculture, brought up. petroleum waste. you've talked about, after you drill an oil. Well, you still have, 50 percent of a product and that could be a bio, reactor subsurface by reactor. so , I'm almost envisioning, this distributed biological manufacturing. Part of your business where you're able to also containerize, because that's something I think a lot of people understand, containerize your process, take it to a place where there is this waste stream and then turn it into a product that can be, sold upstream to whoever partner is.

[00:37:15] Karl: Is that approximately right? Or am I getting that completely wrong?

[00:37:18] Moji: No, that's the big vision, right? even if you envision gold hydrogen, for example. If the plan goes as we think, they could produce hydrogen at a cost of less than a dollar per kilogram with about the same carbon intensity as green hydrogen. So if you have that, we could couple that with CO2 and turn that into the organic intermediate One part of this natural process is enabling the next.

[00:37:44] Moji: And who is to say that's not the best way, because right now we have a version of that that is based on chemical reactions and sometimes not very, smooth handovers from one part of the industry to the other. the vision that we have is natural resource industry of the future.

[00:38:00] Moji: So that if you say oil and gas company, mining company, chemical company, we want them to think like a natural resource company. And instead of saying we're all in gas, because you have this exchange with nature, like what you said earlier, it should not be extracted. It should be regenerative from the beginning in your design.

[00:38:18] Moji: If you're a mining company and you have a mine site, when you're done, no one should be even able to say that there was a mine here at some point. Because you already have considered the recovery, the biodiversity, like everything else in it, Same in the oil and gas industry. same with the chemical industry, like, biochemistry replacing chemistry, one reaction at a time the vision.

[00:38:41] Moji: Because the challenge that they have is, It doesn't matter if you use green electricity or not, if you still require so much electricity to power a thousand degrees centigrade, 10, 000 PSI reaction. Whereas if you could replace that with, ambient pressure and temperature and apply synthetic biology to make it fast, because that's been the challenge that they have.

[00:39:02] Moji: It's like, yeah, but it's not fast. Well, if you could do that and have it precise so that you don't have to spend as much on the damage stream and separating all this. Co products that you didn't want. Why not? So we are at the early stages of that. And so we have already done this in pharma in fragrance and some of the higher end, molecules, low volume.

[00:39:22] Moji: So this, process of that starting to come into, intermediates and then eventually maybe even to commodities, is something that the industry should work towards and that's where this comes in with People from synthetic biology being more and more present and chemical companies and exploring what reaction makes sense to do now and then move on to the next.

[00:39:42] Erum: hmm. It's incredible. I mean, I love the. Natural resource company. I think that's a great vision to have. we need that. and it's been exciting to see how you guys are evolving and responding to what's going on in a variety of industries and being able to be nimble and agile and just listen and react.

[00:40:02] Erum: a great thing. And, I want to say that, when I was starting to learn more about Civita, I'm like, okay, let's try to learn more. And I was like Googling things and I went to YouTube and I saw this video It was your company retreat and I think you were talking to your company.

[00:40:16] Erum: It was a Hawaiian theme. Do you had a lay on? this is cool. I really felt like, I mean, is there companies so huge, having these retreats and I'm just like, wait, this is really about, Moji and his team, his leadership, creating a company of culture.

[00:40:30] Erum: And I want to transitioning this conversation about How you approach building a company, especially in the biotech space, how many people are at your company, how you think about growing a team, just so we can understand what's going on in the mind emoji.

[00:40:47] Moji: Yeah, the video that you saw is from SemVita day as we call it. And the idea came because I was thinking, how come these big companies have these days where they talk about ideas and the future and they bring their network and we're a startup, why don't we do our version of that?

[00:41:04] Moji: I think also generally for events, the bar is set so low. we all have been to so many events. Everyone's dozing off. It's just boring. so we try to think of ways to make it more fun, that's where the Hawaiian. theme came in. it helped also that I'm a huge Tiki fans, like cups and drinks and all that stuff.

[00:41:22] Moji: but it was a lot of fun. people came in with this expectation right off the bat. We give them a lay and we told them to wear a Hawaiian shirt. So throughout the day, it was just a big party, And then the other thing that we do, we don't make that day actually about Sem Vida, even though it's called Sem Vida Day.

[00:41:37] Moji: It's more about sharing of ideas. We invite futurists, storytellers, basically to give people a chance to think bigger, and think outside of the box. last one, uh, futurists had a keynote about Leonardo da Vinci and how he did that. Like he used his background art and science to come up with this ideas and his thinking process.

[00:41:56] Moji: And our scientists love that because they could relate, in their own life. And I think We don't do enough of that. conferences is very targeted and everyone just wants to pitch their company or something. so that's also part of the culture. we've gone through ups and downs ourselves as any company, but part of it was maneuvering this platform product situation was one of those.

[00:42:18] Moji: So we grew up to maybe about 85 people, but today's Zambita is about 30. And then each of those two companies, I think maybe 15 people max. so it adds up to maybe about the same, but the other thing was, at the beginning for us to send me that we're trying to build more in house, where IP was a much bigger issue processes were not clear yet.

[00:42:40] Moji: but throughout time, we've become a lot more targeted. because if you fundraise and I could actually afford, more of a players, your hiring strategy is more expanded. you could actually headhunt if you want to. so we've become a lot more targeted. That's why I think our future is going to be, less people.

[00:42:57] Moji: but more targeted. the other thing I've learned is once you go from 30 people to the next layer, communication becomes a whole other world, and, if you're Don't have the right people to set up the right infrastructure. You out of a sudden start having all of these communication issues. so.

[00:43:15] Moji: Being in this sweet spot, I think for the stage that we are right now is something that we're trying to protect and really challenge everyone when it comes to solving problems by just expanding the team as opposed to getting creative. And found also outsourcing, now at this stage is the right time for us to explore more.

[00:43:31] Moji: so all of that actually helps with culture because this office that I'm calling you right now, we're ending this And we're moving into the same space with everyone in the same space

[00:43:42] Moji: because we've always had different offices for the, molecular biology and fermentation and then there's the commercial team and pilot plant.

[00:43:50] Moji: So everyone is excited from to be able to be in the same place. and working together more closely. but this space. Last thing I would say is that it attracts really meaningful people because these are like really passionate scientists who want to help who care about sustainability and they're on a mission from the get go, and whether they come from a big company or from academia, there's a reason that they want to be in this exact space.

[00:44:14] Moji: As a matter of fact, sometimes we've even had, because we're in Houston, someone who is doing cancer research even at MD Anderson, but they say, I want more tangible, something that I could see the result of in a few years. And that's why they see sustainability as an avenue. to use their skills.

[00:44:29] Moji: So that's very helpful. And then on top of that, we have our core values, which we've really took time to curate. And this is something that we use in the interview process in the way that, we incentivize and develop our own team throughout time. And this is something that we've been doing across the past seven years.

[00:44:45] Karl: Yeah, that's amazing. just to cap that off, seeing this expansion, I love that. you're seeing these people from MD Anderson, which are cancer researchers are hardcore, what we would consider to be traditional biotech in the healthcare space, moving into, let's just say the climate space, but we're seeing this expansion of both biotech and climate tech industries.

[00:45:05] Karl: Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs that are looking either to enter these fields or people like you who are transitioning from a more traditional field into this? Any advice or, words of wisdom you would share.

[00:45:18] Moji: Well, you know, I got really lucky that Tara. just happened to be my sister and just like help me, if it wasn't that, it would have been extremely difficult to try to understand the biotech landscape. So to that point, I think, removing that limitation about where the solution is going to come from and keeping an open mind and realizing that you could, have the right co founder that knows that you could hire people who were experts in that.

[00:45:43] Moji: so for me personally, I know a common advice is that the founders have to technically like technical founders are the best. And there's a lot of truth to that, but I think it's about the combination and the vision, to be able to start, and in this space specifically. People who come from a biotech background, they don't know about like mining industry, how do you expect them to innovate in that space?

[00:46:05] Moji: And then those who are in those industries, they don't know about biotech. So you need the combination. And that's why, personally, I love to go, and this could be one of those, takeaways is I love to go to events where I know nothing about, if different industry, different people.

[00:46:20] Moji: diverse groups expose yourself to different ideas. and that's where you'd be surprised sometimes a lot of ideas come from those combinations. the other thing that I did, and I encourage everyone to do this is, mentioned this foresight, study that we did at Zambita and U of H has a course around that.

[00:46:36] Moji: I was wondering how come futurists like Ray Corswell and others, They predict all these things and they're right. how do they do it? what's the framework that they use? Are they just super smart inventors or is there more to this? And what I found was that there is a framework that is used and it's called Foresight.

[00:46:53] Moji: So I looked it up and turns out U of H had a Foresight Master's program and they offer a course, it's a one week long class. So I went to that and it was the best course I've ever taken. And on my table I had people from NATO, from Epic Games, from Academia, from snack companies.

[00:47:12] Moji: people were thinking about, The future, but they want to build this systematically. I think it's a powerful tool to build a future scenario. And that's where a lot of these ideas will come in. Once you zoom in on a topic in area. So if you think about, okay, I want to do something in the space of libraries. I want to be entrepreneur for libraries, If you do a four sided study for future of libraries, I promise you, you're going to come up with like five amazing ideas that could be big companies in that space. So it's a bit of that framework for us. We did the future of buy solutions and energy transition.

[00:47:45] Moji: I mentioned, biological data storage and computing, I know it for a fact that that is going to be a huge category. And if you see it today, how much everyone's talking about the energy requirement for data storage and AI. And everyone is just trying to build more power plants.

[00:48:03] Moji: It's like, well, how could we use less energy in the first place? And Oh, did you know how much efficient DNA is? And if you go beyond that, the peptides and how much data we could restore, then there's the computing part, like our brain. So how could we learn for next gen ways of doing the same thing without needing as much energy requirement, so for someone who wants to look at this space, it's have to put yourself in that future vision and explore what ideas, may surprise you.

[00:48:29] Erum: Yeah, that's something like call my love. I in some of the episodes, we really take it far into the future. We just love speculating, but having a framework to really think it through. I mean, I would definitely want to check out this foresight. we'll put a link in the show notes so other entrepreneurs can check it out.

[00:48:43] Erum: But that's incredible. What's it like working with your sister?

[00:48:47] Moji: I joke when people ask me that it's much better than working with your spouse. I do not recommend that. That does introduce a lot of risk also for the company. But for my sister, it's been amazing. And part of it is because When you have a co founder, the number one requirement is you need to have 100 percent absolute trust in each other.

[00:49:06] Moji: And the trust comes from knowing that no matter what is going on, the other person has good intentions. And when that happens, it means that, Oh, well, everything else is about communication and having a process for decision making. So it's been amazing, to do this with Tara. I would say the caveat is, And we, got there and we fixed it.

[00:49:26] Moji: If you could lose the sibling relationship, because you always just like talking about work and at work or outside of work and it changes. And for us, it's even weirder because we talk Farsi is our mother language, but then sometimes at home, we're just talking English and talking about work. And that's, a trigger.

[00:49:43] Moji: It's like, we should not be talking in English about work at home. So let's switch back to Farsi. so we have to set up a system. if you go. One weekend out of town, we make it a point that this is not about work. And what's been surprising, actually, we come back with even more ideas for Semvita when we're together, but they don't think about Semvita for a day, but no, it's been great. I think, in some weird way, because there is a legacy of family owned businesses, But they're more like, I don't know, meatpacking or something.

[00:50:10] Karl: Yeah.

[00:50:11] Moji: and to have a high tech biotech, a startup. But I think that the combination of our skills in that she's over the science and technology on the commercialization side, it allows us to not have overlaps in a way that creates undue friction.

[00:50:24] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would love to work with my sister. I also have two brothers and I don't know about trusting them, but my

[00:50:32] Moji: That's what everyone says. Yeah.

[00:50:35] Erum: Brothers. Uh, no, but that's a beautiful thing. And I bet, your parents and your family is very proud that you guys have come together and built this big company.

[00:50:43] Erum: So, congratulations to you and your family. but yeah, this is incredible. know you guys are working on your first commercial plant. We're really excited to learn more about that. If there's any investors listening emojis right here, we'll put his contact information. Sounds like a great opportunity.

[00:51:00] Erum: but thank you so much emoji. Thank you so much for taking the time. Of a busy, busy day to come and talk to us about what you're doing. I think it's be really helpful for our audience and we'll have to have you back on.

[00:51:09] Karl: Absolutely.

[00:51:11] Moji: Anytime. Thank you.

[00:51:13] Karl: Thank you.