113. Microbe Mission Possible: Noah Helman Discusses iMicrobes' Quest to Turn Waste into Wealth

[00:00:03] Karl: All right, Noah Hellman Industrial Microbes. We're so happy to have you on the Grow Everything podcast.

[00:00:10] Noah: Thanks so much for inviting me. Really happy to be here.

[00:00:13] Karl: Yeah, you and I got introduced to each other, through Gen9, which is a earlier DNA synthesis company and industrial microbes at that point had won an award and received a bunch of free DNA. But before starting industrial microbes, you're part of symbi 0. If we want to call it that, can you describe what that was, what it means to you and maybe some lessons that you learned from that?

[00:00:37] Karl: and how did those lessons apply to where we are today?

[00:00:40] Noah: SinBio 1. 0 for me was a big in thinking about, what my career was going to be and where we needed to try to make a difference in the world. I think they were heady times. there was so much excitement around all the different companies that were getting started and funded and even going, Public, not that S nine went public.

[00:00:59] Noah: We were in some ways the little sibling of Amris and Solazyme, here in the Bay Area. but I just remember a huge amount of optimism and that bore out in bringing a bunch of terrific people into the industry. And certainly one of the things that I took away. From that period was how important it is to work with really great people smart motivated We were coming in on the weekends staying Late or in my case, getting to work really, really early to miss some traffic coming across the Bay Bridge.

[00:01:29] Noah: and we had incredible technology that hit all these technical milestones. we were making product and sending that out the door to partners for testing. And at the same time, reality, Came in and bit at a time that, oil was really expensive everybody was excited about replacing it, but then seemed like things shifted.

[00:01:47] Noah: And obviously that was outside of our control, but it did have a major impact. And suddenly the challenge of what it meant to compete. Or such large markets and these products that were very cost sensitive that all came to crash down on top of us, before we knew it rapidly.

[00:02:07] Erum: Yeah, the whole biofuels story, is a very interesting case study. And, hopefully we're learning from that. There are obviously new companies that are spinning up with new technology. And I would love for us to dig into that. You've been a part of this in bio world for some time, and now you're at industrial microbes.

[00:02:25] Erum: Can you tell us what led you to start the company?

[00:02:29] Noah: While I was at LS9, as I mentioned, there were some incredible people there and two of the people that I met were Derek Greenfield and Liz Clark, are now my co founders. we've been at Industrial Microbes for over a decade. back then, at LS9, we were scientists at the bench.

[00:02:44] Noah: Working to make these technologies happen and, bring them to market. But we weren't really thinking that much about what the economics were how that impacted everything. when that reality came to our front door, it was sort of like once bitten, twice shy, maybe. I think we realized that, we really need to pay attention to this.

[00:03:05] Noah: we started thinking about that problem much more. like engineers, I guess, if the problem is cost, where does the cost come from? Well, it turns out the cost comes from two main areas, the cost of feedstock and the cost of the purification, getting the product to the right spec.

[00:03:21] Noah: So. We took that and tried to think about what could we do to address that problem very directly? Could we come up with a technology that would allow us to switch to a different feedstock and eliminate some of those cost problems? While at the same time checking all the boxes on things like sustainability and getting to low carbon emissions or a net zero process, and it was that process of ideating, how can we solve that problem? All of those things at once that led us to reimagining using different feedstocks for industrial biotechnology, specifically, C1 and C2 feedstocks. So things like methane and methanol, as well as, ethane and ethanol. that was the initial set of work that we started out to pursue.

[00:04:07] Karl: and you guys, at the end of 2024 announced that you had raised, 10 million and in the news it said, to transform biomanufacturing, what does that look like? What is it you guys are focused on?

[00:04:17] Noah: Right now we're focused on using a new feedstock. So specifically ethanol as a feedstock to Make chemicals and materials cost competitive prices that are net zero emissions and can come from, ethanol, with the recent fundraise, as you would expect, we're building out the team and more capabilities inside our lab and focusing on scale up and developing partnerships, and moving much more rapidly towards commercialization, through that, Scale up process.

[00:04:46] Noah: And, we just brought great VP of business development, Matt Angler, who's helping to set up partnerships for us throughout industry. So we're moving that, technology that the team has already developed further towards the efficiency that we need to hit in order to really commercialize that.

[00:05:01] Noah: And in parallel, setting up the types of commercial relationships that we need to bring that to market.

[00:05:06] Erum: Yeah. I mean, we would love to learn a little bit more about. What type of materials are being made with the ethanol? What type of, microbes are you using in general? I mean, we would just love to imagine a little bit more on how you're growing materials using ethanol through, precision fermentation, which we do talk a lot about on this podcast, but you specifically, we would love to learn either what can be made or what you're making today.

[00:05:30] Erum: help us visioneer that.

[00:05:32] Noah: Absolutely. So Our first set of products is going to be made using a single bioprocess that converts ethanol into a polymer called poly 3HP, which accumulates inside of our cells and We're using E. coli. the advantage of doing that is simplifying the purification and conversion process to the final product.

[00:05:54] Noah: In our case, the first product we'll be going after is acrylic acid, which can be made from that polymer using a very simple process. Essentially, you just heat it up and separate. The vapor is using distillation, for example, That checks the boxes on, as I mentioned initially, trying to reduce the feedstock and the purification cost by simplifying the process.

[00:06:14] Noah: So, by developing one bioprocess that gets us to this polymer, we can use a chemical process, basically heating it, it's very simple process, to get to acrylic acid. We recently started a second project to take the same polymer to acrylonitrile. that way we can use the same bioprocess. But just shift what happens in the downstream conversion to get to a different product.

[00:06:38] Noah: And then we can make, in this case, carbon fiber from acrylic nitrile that we can use, as a sustainably sourced carbon fiber.

[00:06:45] Erum: Oh, wow. yeah, you said you're using, ethanol for those.

[00:06:50] Noah: That's

[00:06:51] Noah: right.

[00:06:51] Karl: where's that ethanol coming from?

[00:06:53] Noah: Well, one of the reasons we're really excited about ethanol is it can come from a bunch of different sources. So, of course, today, ethanol in the U. S. is mostly made for the fuel market. At least here in California, it's about 10 percent of our gasoline blend, as many other places in the U. S. And it mostly comes from what they call first generation corn ethanol, where corn that isn't going to be used for human consumption is used as a energy crop and is turned via fermentation into ethanol. and we can leverage that infrastructure to be able to use their ethanol as a feedstock for our fermentation process.

[00:07:26] Noah: And then through a very efficient pathway, get to, this polymer actually. In the case where we get to, the highest theoretical limit of that process, we can consume an ethanol and a CO2 molecule in order to make a three carbon Molecule that's used to make polymer accumulates in the cell, ethanol in the future, can come from a variety of different sources.

[00:07:48] Noah: You're probably familiar with cellulosic ethanol where agricultural waste can be converted into ethanol using again, a fermentation process, very robust microorganisms, More advanced technologies are still coming online. So companies like Chem take municipal solid waste or basically landfill waste and gas.

[00:08:06] Noah: Buy that into syngas and then turn into ethanol. Lantech and Autobio and others are using biological processes to take thin gas from industrial off gas and make ethanol. and then there are papers coming out. Every week, basically on the direct electro reduction of CO2 into two carbon molecules, including ethanol.

[00:08:25] Noah: so we're very excited about the idea of ethanol being a building block feedstock for the chemical industry and for The biomanufacturing industry as well, and so we're trying to anticipate that's where things will go in the circular economy that we see is starting to develop.

[00:08:40] Karl: I just want to ask one quick follow up on that. What does that look like? electrifying, waste to turn it into ethanol. you said there's papers about that. I've heard people talk about that in the past and I was like, well, when's that going to happen? You know, being a little bit skeptical and then you have people saying, well, Once, you reach, marginal zero cost energy, it'll change the game when it comes to feed stocks and how we do industrial, by manufacturing, what does that look like today?

[00:09:04] Noah: the work that's being done on direct electro reduction of CO2 to ethanol is, still, I think, pretty early days. if you're familiar with the company 12, they're doing something similar. Their catalyst makes, as far as I understand, and they can then convert that into other products like SAF. New catalysts that are being developed are making two carbon molecules generally. It's not 100 percent selectivity, but there are improvements happening every day, at least in the literature that I'm seeing. and interestingly, think interfacing that with biology. Could be a unique opportunity because the most important thing I think we need to see there is the conversion Efficiency into usable molecules It doesn't necessarily have to be a hundred percent conversion into just one thing if the next step in your process can handle a mixture I'm curious about whether Biology could do a good job of that right now the output of those experiments tends to be maybe it's some ethanol Some ethylene, a little methane, maybe hydrogen. If you take that mix and you can find biological solution to that, why couldn't we consume all of those? Molecules in parallel, and then you could focus the electro chemistry on just efficiently using the energy and the inputs there to convert it into something that biology could take as a mixture,

[00:10:17] Erum: Okay, and then you would just, do it through a downstream process, filter out the different chemicals?

[00:10:23] Noah: you could have a fermentation process that consumes multiple things at once

[00:10:27] Erum: Mm hmm.

[00:10:28] Noah: and uses all of those molecules to build the products that you want and maybe end up with just a single product on the output of that fermentation.

[00:10:35] Karl: Yeah, it's funny cause that's where my mind went. I was imagining, 10, Microbiome of engineered organisms that each are able to consume a different output. And as you said, NOAA produced one molecule at the end, which is a wild idea. it just seems

[00:10:52] Karl: very efficient.

[00:10:53] Noah: Yeah, you can maybe even put all those pathways in a single bug.

[00:10:56] Karl: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:58] Noah: don't know. Then again, this is thinking, a little further out. But, we're excited about ethanol because we do see that it is something that could be reached through multiple pathways.

[00:11:07] Noah: they all look attractive from an environmental perspective, and it's going to shake out in different ways based on cost availability logistics and supply chain of that. Type of feedstock. So, yeah, we see that there's going to be a shift moving away from the petrochemical industry.

[00:11:22] Noah: the question is what's coming next, what makes the most sense to invest in next? And we think ethanol has a really strong position there.

[00:11:30] Erum: Yeah. , so ethanol is a feedstock and you mentioned E. coli as a microbe E. coli has been, very well studied, this is always something that, when I talk to, CEOs of companies are like, Oh, we're just laser focused, which is completely fine, but just entertain me it helped me visualize, have you thought of using other microbes?

[00:11:48] Erum: Would there be benefit if there was micro that could do a certain thing? Any. Thoughts on using different microbes?

[00:11:55] Noah: Yeah. My perspective on that is like an all of the above, I've spoken at conferences a couple of times where the person on stage before me talked about how terrible E. coli was and we should never use it. And why does everybody try to shoehorn every pathway into E.

[00:12:11] Noah: coli? That's not the way to do it. I'm not so wedded to one strategy or another. I think in the end, what gets commercialized is what makes the most sense from an economic and an environmental perspective. sometimes you can go out in the environment, find a microorganism that'll consume a feedstock and make a certain product, and if that's the most efficient way to do it, then that's great.

[00:12:31] Noah: think the advantage of using strains like E. coli is You mentioned it's well understood and well studied. It's also been scaled up huge industrial scale over and over again. so there's a lot of industrial knowledge already around that process. And that's an expensive thing to have to relearn. If you bring a new microorganism to market, scale up is of course expensive, it's very large volumes and lots of people and expensive equipment to borrow or to build.

[00:12:58] Noah: So, get the perspective of. Being excited about a new microorganism, and certainly there are things that E. coli is not perfect for, but it's a different set of risk, depending on the particular feedstock and product and process that you want to run, maybe it's the right set of risks or maybe it isn't. I heard a rumor recently, I don't know if this is true, I heard a rumor recently that even the big amino acid producers that used to mostly use Z glutamicum for making a bunch of amino acids have shifted to using E. coli. They've been operating for decades, why did they do that? I assume it's just Efficiency and cost and robustness of the strain and the process

[00:13:32] Karl: So you mentioned, challenges in scaling and specifically mentioned that, E. coli has been scaled successfully repeatedly over the decades. but are there any challenges that industrial microbes have faced when it comes to scaling and have you guys overcome those challenges?

[00:13:47] Noah: scaling is tricky because I think it kind of highlights the fundamental chicken and egg problem that you have, especially as a startup, you get started, you have an idea, you look for funding for that when you ask for funding, people say, well, Is that what customers actually want? Is someone going to pay you for that?

[00:14:06] Noah: so then you go to the people who might pay you, and you ask if they want to support that work, and they say, or if they would buy it if you were successful, and they want to see samples. Well, you can't give them samples until you have some technology, and you can't provide that sample in the scale that they want until you've done it in a larger bioreactor.

[00:14:21] Noah: And so you get stuck in this three way chicken and egg problem. we've been fortunate enough to find ways of lowly getting to that point in some cases, and now things are really picking up. And I would love to highlight that. I think the two biggest factors there are investors who have that long term vision.

[00:14:40] Noah: The kind of support we've gotten from government agencies like RPE and BioMADE recently, that can really break that cycle where you can get stuck always trying to scrape by for us, that has been what's made the biggest difference. So today we're at that point where we're scaling up, we're generating many kilograms of product that we're sending out to different partners for testing.

[00:15:03] Noah: like I said, it's expensive to do that. so the support from groups like BioMADE has been critical. and being able to leverage the expertise of people in our case at IVRL in Illinois, who's been terrific partners for us, we've pretty quickly been able to take the work that our team has done at the bench scale, prove its robustness and bring that almost 1000 fold larger fermentation volumes and see very similar robust behavior.

[00:15:28] Noah: just in the last six months, I think we've made a huge step change there.

[00:15:32] Karl: That's amazing.

[00:15:33] Erum: Yeah, very exciting. the biomate, we will have to learn more about, that whole story. what are they looking from, industrial microbes in terms of milestones. are we still talking about acrylic acid and acrylonitrile? I Is that the chemical that you're scaling up?

[00:15:48] Erum: So we'll have to hear a little bit more about that.

[00:15:50] Noah: We're working with Biomate on two different projects. One is the conversion of ethanol into poly 3HP. So specifically looking at using that as a biodegradable bioplastic polymer for different applications. And actually, at this moment, my co founder, Liz Clark, is in Illinois working on purifying that polymer using a process that we developed.

[00:16:12] Noah: Really excited to bring all that material home and begin our testing with it. the second program is around acrylonitrile for sustainable carbon fiber. And that is starting up, over the next few months in the collaboration with, some folks at Georgia tech who are experts in carbon fiber and, group at firm works to help us do additional scale up, hopefully to, An 18, 000 liter fermenter that they have that we'll be able to run our process in and use that material to then generate acrylonitrile and make actual sustainable carbon fibers. Obviously, that's really exciting to have 2 different products that we're working on at the same time and to reduce. The emissions from both of those processes would be really. valuable for us partners are working with.

[00:16:58] Erum: Wow. What kind of carbon fiber are we talking about? Are they multi balled carbon nanotubes?

[00:17:03] Noah: no, it's just made through the polyacrylonitrile process. but it's, the high performance carbon fiber that goes into consumer goods like, lightweight bicycles, but it's also really critical for lightweighting vehicles like airplanes cars and, Probably from the government's perspective, drones,

[00:17:21] Erum: Spaceships?

[00:17:22] Noah: Sure. Yeah. I'd love to make some spaceships. I started life as a physicist, you know? So you don't get involved in that. If you don't get excited about spaceships,

[00:17:29] Erum: Yeah. Full circle.

[00:17:31] Erum: Full circle. Here we go. You're making

[00:17:33] Karl: Yeah. I'm super excited about all of that. news, Noah, we are going to have, Doug Friedman of BioMADE on towards the end of January. So we're very excited. We've been trying to get him on. we've had a number of biomanufacturing companies on the podcast.

[00:17:48] Karl: just curious, what's different about your approach? and why is it necessary to have different approaches when it comes to biomanufacturing?

[00:17:55] Noah: the main thing that differentiates us is the focus on using different feedstocks. So we were talking about ethanol for a while. that is a way that we can. diversify our process away from what other folks have been looking at. we think there are good techno economic reasons to do that that give us an advantage in the market.

[00:18:12] Noah: but also it allows us to just have a diversity of approaches, not just from other biomanufacturing, but from the chemical industry as well. for example, in looking at our project to get to acrylic acid right now, there are, I think it's five. Acrylic acid plants here in the U S and four of them are on the Gulf coast.

[00:18:31] Noah: So probably heard of the various things that have caused disruptions in the chemical industry in Texas, whether it's freeze, a cold weather event a couple of years ago, or when they have hurricanes, if that disrupts one or two of those plants, it's a big change in the supply chain.

[00:18:46] Noah: for us to diversify. The feedstocks and the locations and to distribute that a little bit more throughout in our case, us manufacturing that provides a bunch of different useful. Benefits. it allows us to insulate the supply chain from some of those types of disruptions that you can imagine in the future, beyond just weather events, but also, geopolitics other things that, If you listen to the news, you could imagine that, tariffs against China, could become a very big issue for inflation here in the U S for all the different products that currently buy and a lot of raw materials, were buying now come from China.

[00:19:22] Noah: to be able to improve domestic manufacturing is another really important aspect of what we're doing. And especially because of the U S is strategic advantage. In ethanol production at a low cost with an abundant feedstock with all the infrastructure we have, we think that that really positions us the U.

[00:19:41] Noah: S. economy to insulate, ourselves better from those kinds of supply shocks.

[00:19:45] Erum: Yeah. We, spoken about distributed manufacturing. quite a few times. had Anthea on, they talked about they also want bio made award, to develop active pharmaceutical ingredients, which is very exciting for them. of course, I mean, that in theory sounds great distributed, you could de risk all of your supply chain.

[00:20:05] Erum: but what other infrastructure changes would Help accelerate the adoption of biomanufacturing. is it distributed by manufacturing? Obviously, funding the infrastructure would be, but let's say that's, definitely going to happen. But can you tell us a little bit more about what you think is required to accelerate the adoption of biomanufacturing?

[00:20:23] Noah: think a lot of it gets into the details of what does that actually look like in the case of scale up. Obviously. It's really important to as a startup with limited resources to be able to access the type of equipment that you need for that to be affordable and when you need it. so in terms of infrastructure, it's not just the fermentation capacity, it's also the downstream and the expertise.

[00:20:48] Noah: one of the projects that we worked on, there's literally one piece of equipment in the whole U S. And we need to rent that and align, that that works with the other projects that they're trying to rent that out to, for example, that's a bottleneck for us. If we can't get access to that, that's a big problem.

[00:21:04] Noah: there is more interest these days in trying to solve that problem, both with funding from government groups that are seeing that as a strategic challenge for domestic biomanufacturing and I think also from the industry perspective, our lead investor in our seed round, first bite ventures, the managing partner there, Veronica Breckenridge has recently been working on a project called bio well, it's an emerging example of exactly what you're talking about.

[00:21:30] Noah: They're trying to put together the right pieces to help companies like us in the scale up process. Bring together the expertise in the downstream pieces of equipment and then also connect that to say, the chemicals industry in Houston, where they're setting this up and being able to show that connection to the rest of the value chain is also really important in getting pull through from.

[00:21:53] Noah: The eventual customers, because that creates the demand that motivates everyone else in that value chain to move toward these more sustainable processes.

[00:22:03] Karl: Yeah, I'm glad you're mentioning that because there's a bunch of points that you've made that I think are really important. Like this idea of being dependent on, four facilities in the Houston area is a nightmare. And then, the fact that you guys are dependent on one piece of machinery that no one else has in the United States, that's just crazy town.

[00:22:21] Karl: You know, that is so insane. I want to know what that machinery is and who's out there. Why aren't they making more of them? Why aren't more of them available? and then, this idea of being able to look at the entire value chain. We're talking a lot about that in terms of, ecosystem building.

[00:22:37] Karl: you've got an innovator like you guys. You need infrastructure. You need end customers. How do we put all those people together? It's something that we see that there's a big need for. and just like you've been talking about, all these waste products that can be turned into ethanol, that's something that we've talked about a fair amount on grow everything, but maybe you can give our audience a little bit of, background on why does it matter that we use waste as an input?

[00:23:00] Karl: and maybe give us some, examples of the way you guys are approaching it.

[00:23:04] Noah: mean, right now there are so many things in our everyday lives that we don't even realize where they come from. I mean, like 99 percent of people probably don't even understand how many products come from the petrochemical industry. I was just thinking about this the other day, like imagine if buy a new car, what is it made of? Where do those materials come from? It's obvious that maybe people know that plastics come from the petrochemical industry, but in the car, there's the paint and the coating on the outside. That's a petrochemical product. There's the foam and the seats and the fabric.

[00:23:33] Noah: it might be synthetic. There's, electronics in there that, In order to manufacture those required solvents and photoresist, the deeper you go, the more you realize how interconnected all of those things are with the petrochemical industry. But it's not a matter of can we change, it's really when.

[00:23:52] Noah: the definition of it being sustainable, in a, Say a biomanufacturing process or using renewable feedstocks. There's just no way that you can do that with oil. At some point You can't do that anymore. Eventually it will be an economic thing, but just from physics, we will run out of oil someday.

[00:24:08] Noah: And so we'll have to start from something else. And the question is really, when do we do that? And I would argue primarily for environmental and climate reasons, we should be doing that now it's not going to be easy and it's a huge industry that needs to be disrupted and replaced with fundamentally different technologies.

[00:24:28] Noah: the way we see it is. We should change as little of that as possible, but you have to start at the top and change the feedstock and then you have to find a way to efficiently turn that into the same chemicals that end up in your car, for example, and that's where we want to sit because that is a huge opportunity and we think that biomanufacturing has a unique role to play there by virtue of it being Cost effective and efficient and low emissions and being able to take advantage of low cost electricity in the future to power everything.

[00:24:57] Noah: It's very different from the way the petrochemical industry works today, where they basically power everything from barrel of oil and the molecules, the atoms, they all come from barrel of oil and then the heat and the pressure and everything that's generated to do the reactions is also coming from burning fossil fuels.

[00:25:10] Noah: we just need to change all that. And it's not a matter of, do we have to, it's just when

[00:25:15] Erum: Yeah. And you've thought about this a lot. you've published two books, one on moving the world beyond petrochemicals and the other on the ROI of waste. So can you tell us more about those? and what motivated you to publish these and, what have you learned from the response? And of course we'll link to them in our show notes.

[00:25:35] Noah: I think what we were Realizing going through the process of looking at where the trends are in the world, as I was trying to describe earlier, if you're going to build a new chemical plant, it could be around for 30, 40 years that's difficult job predicting the future. What are things going to look like But you can see what the macro trends are today With the challenges that we have, I think, especially with respect to climate change, we see that chemical and material industry, they know that they need to change. They just don't quite know how to do it. nobody really wants to be the first one to jump out and.

[00:26:09] Noah: Make a mistake. So there's a lot of reluctance from the folks at the top of the value chain where they're starting from oil and, trying to figure out how do they change? How do they reduce their emissions? Most of what they come up with are frankly incremental changes, but I don't think that's going to suffice.

[00:26:27] Noah: it's a big and important industry and it's hypocritical of us to, Point a finger at them and say, they're doing a terrible job because I'm buying those products. I mean, this is a plastic pen, you know, so how do we solve that problem in a way that's going to work over decades?

[00:26:42] Noah: that was what motivated our view of trying to zoom out and take a big picture. Look at this, what needs to get done and who is Motivating that and paying attention to it. And one of the things that we've understood from diving into that and from the response we've gotten is that the companies that are closest to consumers are the ones that are paying the most attention to things like climate change and carbon emissions.

[00:27:05] Noah: And that's because they hear from regular consumers like us that we do care about that. And at the same time, if you ask people, Do you want to pay twice as much for the diapers that you're putting on your kid you use for two hours and then you throw out most people don't. So we have to come up with solutions that zero emissions and are at the same cost takes to make them today.

[00:27:27] Noah: And if we do that, of course, you go to the store and you buy like the green version or the old version, you're going to buy the green version if it's the same cost and the same performance. So it is a big challenge, but what we've heard is. The consumers want it. And so the companies that are closest to the consumers want that.

[00:27:44] Noah: we just need to figure out how do we then stretch that motivation all the way up to the top of the value chain? Cause there are sometimes many companies in there and that motivation decreases a little bit each, time you go, back up the chain. that's one of the big things that we're trying to help people understand is that we have to get there.

[00:28:03] Noah: It's a matter of when we can build the technologies to do it. On the fundamentals, it works and it can be cost competitive, and we just need to engage the entire value chain to do that and to work with that industry more broadly. And then there will be huge opportunities there for those who are willing to go out help us build that type of new technology replace what's already out there, but isn't going to do the job in the future.

[00:28:28] Karl: Yeah, that's super exciting, Noah. based on that and everything you've told us, what do you see the milestones that you guys are looking to accomplish in the next year or two years?

[00:28:38] Noah: Yeah, the next year is going to be big for us. we've said. A bunch of technical milestones, our team over the last 12 months has hit every single one of those exactly on time, and I'm super proud of them. They have worked really hard and been very creative in solving those problems, and so we've set goals for this year that are mostly driven by our techno economic model, so that by the end of this year, we're, Proving in the lab that we can be at technical metrics that if we achieve them at large scale would put us in rarefied air for being cost competitive on those products.

[00:29:10] Noah: on the commercial side and the scale up side. we want to set up partnerships with some of the major, Chemical producers, especially in acrylic acid and acrylonitrile, for scale up, we are continuing to, test our process at larger and larger scale, generate larger samples, and we've been working with a group called D I B C. I don't know if you've had other folks on the podcast that have been involved there, but it's the defense industrial based consortium. So it's part of the Department of Defense that has awarded these contracts that are about, roughly one and a half million dollars to plan out.

[00:29:44] Noah: What does it look like to make your first commercial facility? And we're in the middle of that project right now. That will help us to have a much clearer view of what it's going to take to build a small commercial plant and what the economics of that will look like. so by the end of this year, we'll have those plans in hand and much clearer view of what it will cost on both the CapEx and OpEx side to do that.

[00:30:05] Noah: the new program we're bringing on to work on sustainable carbon fiber. Hope to have that. Mostly completed by the end of this year. and have actual carbon fiber produced from our process. at the end of the year, I think it's likely we'll be entering a series a fundraising process. So, we'll be looking to, expand the impact of what we're doing to larger scale and to new products potentially.

[00:30:27] Noah: So, 2025. Really excited about that.

[00:30:30] Erum: Yeah, you should, look to the commercial site. Space flight people, Blue Origin and SpaceX. But hey, look, I'm making some carbon fiber. Let me they'll open up their checkbooks for you at the end of the year.

[00:30:44] Noah: if you have their phone numbers, I will

[00:30:45] Erum: Yeah.

[00:30:46] Erum: Yeah, we'll talk. So this is so exciting because we love the whole ways to value idea.

[00:30:53] Erum: And of course, making valuable products. I mean, carbon fiber. Wow. I'm still wrapping my head around how big this can go. And I'm very excited for industrial microbes, but beyond your current work, what developments in synthetic biology most excite you?

[00:31:08] Noah: There's so much going on in the field right now. and not to leave out, any particular topic, but I think two things come to mind. we mostly have our heads down in the bio manufacturing space. So in that area, one thing I'm particularly excited to see would be the ability to design.

[00:31:26] Noah: enzymes with new chemistries. sometimes, when we're designing a new pathway, we'll just look at what else is already out there and enzyme databases. But with the advances that have been made in protein design, I think we're closer than we've ever been to saying, Hey, I would like to transform X into Y, Could you dial up an enzyme that could do that with very high specificity for example, and preventing, those off target reactions so that when I throw it in my cell, it does exactly what I want.

[00:31:54] Noah: that's an area that I'm particularly excited about. The second thing I'm excited about, sure you've done a lot of conversations with people about AI and machine learning and how that crosses over into bio. I'll admit that I tend to have a knee jerk reaction against whatever is the next big thing.

[00:32:08] Noah: Because the hype and the wave always crashes, So in this case, I don't actually think that that is as true as in some prior waves. do think that the computational tools that people are building are super exciting where I. Really get excited is when it's coupled with the large data sets that you really need to generate something of a lot of value one area where I feel like biology does have an advantage over some other fields is the enormous amount of sequence data that has already been generated and that is continues to be generated because of the advances and how low cost it is to do sequencing Those two things coming together has been amazing.

[00:32:50] Noah: and then research labs that have come up with tools that allow you to generate really large data sets, I think will be positioned very strongly. so if you have like a big data Native bio platform that generates enormous data sets that can be used for machine learning.

[00:33:06] Noah: that's an area where I'm particularly excited about. have you all already talked to the folks from abalone bio?

[00:33:12] Karl: No, who is that?

[00:33:13] Karl: We want, to talk to them.

[00:33:15] Noah: yeah, you should. , yeah, I've known their CEO rich you for probably 20 years at this point. and they have an incredible story. So if I could just point you to. Chatting with them at some point.

[00:33:26] Noah: I'm super bullish on what they're doing, and I'm sure you have a really great conversation there, and they have an interesting overlap between the machine learning side and the native bio platform and the therapeutics, and then there's the synthetic biology that they have done to build that platform, I think is really unique and positions them in a great way. So yeah, I love to hear an hour long conversation between you all and rich. I think you have a great time chatting with him.

[00:33:51] Karl: That sounds great. and just as we close this conversation out, I will mention that, synthetic biology is featured on this week's science Friday. He's talking to drew Andy about, mere peptides or mere proteins.

[00:34:03] Karl: And they actually talk about creating a mirror E. coli and why that's a bad idea. And why Drindy and all these scientists came together, against, that kind of building think what you're saying about machine learning is just so. Interesting. Like you, Roman, I were talking about this because on Monday I had been on a call, where these guys from molecule, we're talking about their bio token and, porting it over to the Solana blockchain.

[00:34:27] Karl: And they had this whole conversation about using agents For drug development and it was just one of these mind blowing moments where I was like I don't know if i'm ready for all these agents being loose on the internet doing stuff And have I read any science fiction where that's actually the case?

[00:34:42] Karl: I don't feel like I have but It's very exciting exciting times and It's like we've known each other for a while knowing I just love seeing the progress and how much progress you've just made It feels like in the last couple years. It's just accelerated.

[00:34:55] Noah: Yeah. I mean, I think that's just how it happens sometimes, that, you're grinding away on something and then, you get, Some progress in the lab and that leads, some investors get excited about what you're doing and then a grant comes in from, I don't know, ARPA E or Bio made and then hire a few people and they bring all this new perspective and it just, starts to snowball.

[00:35:15] Noah: And that's the way it's supposed to work. it's suddenly feels for us in the last. I would say six to 12 months. it has a new feeling to it. And, the reaction that we get when we go to a chemical company and describe not just what we could do, but what we're already doing, we're seeing different looks on people's faces, so to speak, they're more serious about that.

[00:35:36] Noah: And, it brings back to a lot of the things that we've discussed today that getting to the point where. You can actually put something in somebody's hand that is large enough for them to believe that it could be part of their future, Like here we have a kilogram of this product that we can work together and turn that into a ton and then we can turn that into a kiloton and that will start to have real impact.

[00:35:59] Noah: it's the point we're just getting to now. So it feels like a really exciting time and, all the infrastructure and, I am manufacturing momentum that we have here in the U. S. Now, I think, is starting to recognize that getting companies to the point that we are just at now should be a major goal to see, then where does it go from there?

[00:36:18] Erum: Yeah, that is extremely exciting. I can feel it. I can sense it in, you know, because he's spoken for the first time a couple years ago. And here we are. I can't wait to hit my 1st set of golf clubs made from industrial microbes, sit a night trial.

[00:36:33] Noah: We'll put you on the list. well, first, Are you a golfer? Are you a big golfer?

[00:36:37] Erum: I mean, not big, but I have, I dabble.

[00:36:40] Noah: Uh huh. All right, next time you're out here, we'll go play the course here in Berkeley. I've only played once in 10 years, so, I will be measuring my score by golf balls lost in the, in the water hazard or whatever, but, be fun.

[00:36:53] Erum: Oh, my gosh. Awesome. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the grab everything podcast, Noah.

[00:36:58] Noah: It was a great conversation. Thanks so much for having me.

[00:37:00] Karl: Yeah. Thank you