17. Beauty and the Biome with Jasmina Aganovic of Arcaea

[00:00:00] Erum: Carl, how's it going?

[00:00:01] Karl: Things are going great, Iram. How about you?

[00:00:03] Erum: Things are going well over here. I know you're heading out somewhere soon.

[00:00:08] Karl: Yeah. I think as this, episode drops, I will be in Spain at the ATG SynBio Conference in Navarra. actually the, that Navarra is the state or the province of Spain that I'll be in, but the town is Pamplona, which is famous for the running of the bulls.

[00:00:24] Erum: Amazing. And then what are you doing when you're there? Are you going to be speaking? Are you going to be on a panel? What's up?

[00:00:31] Karl: I'm doing both of those things. So I'm gonna be- Of course. So I'm gonna give a talk called "Everything Everywhere All at Once," which is something we talk about here, this idea that we need every solution everywhere right now, and we gotta throw a lot of spaghetti against the wall.

[00:00:48] Karl: But the point of the talk is, to discuss how the different lessons that we can take from the big bioengineering hubs, particularly Boston and San Francisco, and how smaller hubs can learn from those. So that's gonna be what I'm talking about. And one of the points I'm gonna make is that, communicating with the public is really important, and the example I'll use is Genspace here in New York, which basically is an open lab for anybody that wants to go.

[00:01:14] Karl: And you and I have talked about Genspace a lot. We met there. We are gonna do an event there in a couple of weeks, so stay tuned, listeners. But I think one of the big opportunities for all of the biofoundries around the world is to open the doors, do classes, let people in your community know what the resources are.

[00:01:33] Karl: But that's w- just one of the lessons, so either come to Spain to see the rest of it, or,we'll talk about it some more. And then I am gonna be running a panel that's gonna be along the same topic.

[00:01:44] Erum: Awesome. Yeah. Well, I'm sure it's a wonderful time in Spain this time of year, and I'm excited for who you're going to meet and who you inspire.

[00:01:54] Erum: It's a very important topic. I think a lot of people, as they learn more about different types of solutions, as they use AI, for example, and AI starting to learn more about biology and solutions through biology or biosolutions, which I'm sure we'll talk more about that term in a bit, in a future episodes.

[00:02:15] Erum: But it's good for people to start hearing it so when they work with AI, they can have some directionality that biology is an opportunity for them.

[00:02:24] Karl: Absolutely.

[00:02:25] Karl: I totally agree, Iram. And, like, you're doing the how to biomanufacture almost anything class, which is another fantastic way for biofoundries or even companies to engage with the public. Talk about what's going on in the class.

[00:02:41] Erum: Yeah. So the class is amazing. It's, held at MIT, so there is an in-person class happening, and then there are nodes all over the world that are participating virtually.

[00:02:52] Erum: So I am a part of the Gen Space node, so again, shout out to that biotech community. But there's BioTokyo Club, there's several communities in Mexico, the BioPunks, they're all a part of this class. And the whole final project is what do you want to biomanufacture? What is your passion?

[00:03:11] Erum: What's interesting to you? And people's final projects kind of run the gamut from therapeutics to biodesign art projects. Mine, I'm looking to produce a white structural dye that's food safe to see can I do it? I don't know. Amazing. Yes.

[00:03:29] Erum: so it's a full semester class, and we're in week five right now. And right now we're learning about different biomanufacturing techniques and specifically this, the week four class is about cell-free protein synthesis. So what- That's

[00:03:47] Karl: amazing.

[00:03:48] Erum: Wow. Yeah. So cell-free protein synthesis and the way that it, this whole project is set up The project of cell-free protein synthesis is there are three target enzymes being a protein, that we are learning to fold. And how do you fold those enzymes? Through an experiment, through the cell-free experiment, and we're using Ginkgo's automated labs.

[00:04:16] Erum: And so each student had to create an experimental protocol. the use of AI is strongly encouraged, and, I have been using it to the full extent of my ability, sharing all the information that I have from the lecture notes to the syllabus to the literature to news stories from companies that might have some information about cell-free, as well as my own spin, right?

[00:04:44] Erum: I do have a little bit of an advantage 'cause I had, a background in, biochemistry. I worked in a lab for six years. Some of these students have no biology background, so that's also- That's crazy. Yeah ... that is so exciting. And admirable. It's very admirable. I'm sure, it's a bit, intimidating for some.

[00:05:00] Erum: These are MIT students, so they are very ambitious and bold, which is amazing for some of, them. But anyone in the class that's participating in it, hats off to them. And so, we just submitted our experiments. they're running right now at Ginkgo's lab, so we'll see what the results are of those.

[00:05:17] Erum: And now thecoming weeks we're gonna learn about, microfluidics, we're gonna learn about different types of manufacturing. And the kind of this interesting thing about the cell-free protein design is that all the students are participating To fold these three proteins and who would get the highest titer or the best folded proteins from these experiments.

[00:05:42] Erum: And so the students are running these experiments, but we're also competing against AI agents that have different levels of access to information, and it's a collaboration with OpenAI. So they're calling it a coopetition, so cooperation and competition. Combine those words, and here we are. And so it's, there's so much innovation.

[00:06:06] Erum: There's so many levels of experimentation from the students using AI to actually creating the experiments, to these experiments being in automated labs. You're running them remotely, so that's another level. To there's a whole meta science component, which is, well, how do we decide collectively which studies to run?

[00:06:27] Erum: What happens if they're, a lot of people propose the same study because we're using similar AI models, and then you just have, like, a lot of the same. And then of course, like, OpenAI has agents running that have either zero information, the same information that the students do, or even more information.

[00:06:47] Erum: So what will that look like? And it's so bizarre, but hats off to the How To Biomanufacture Anything crew led by David Kong. There's a lot of industry players that are supporting this, that are providing their software tools to also help us really hone in on the science and being able to actually make something.

[00:07:10] Erum: So we'll see.

[00:07:12] Karl: Yeah, I mean, I love this idea of, coopetition or coopetition, whatever you wanna call it. Because what it sounds like is, for these cell-free enzyme folding experiments, it almost sounds like there's three ways to run the experiment. One is, human-only knowledge.

[00:07:30] Karl: One is human augmented with the AI. a-actually, I think there's, there could be four ways of doing it. So human only, human plus AI with no knowledge, and then AI with all the knowledge in the world. Is that kind of the way that part is playing out?

[00:07:45] Erum: Yeah. Yeah. in some regard. I don't know if there's a control of just scientists that are just reading literature and not using AI.

[00:07:53] Erum: Everyone's using AI, and it's interest- interesting to see how they are. So part of the homework assignment is sharing prompts, and so, so we're doing that as well, and just understanding how we can collaborate across so many different people from all parts of the world with different types of knowledge to do things that are hard.

[00:08:13] Erum: I mean, we're making a therapeutic. So there's the three enzymes. One is sfGFP, which is green fluorescent protein, a very important tool when you're doing biological research 'cause it fluoresces if it's, if it's working properly. And then there's PETase, which is a plastic-degrading enzyme.

[00:08:32] Erum: And then there's Retaplase, which is a therapeutic for cardiac conditions. And so, yeah, it's like, okay, we're making these things, And so this idea that we'll probably talk about a lot, and we have already, is this idea of discovery being commoditized and anyone can, make these.

[00:08:50] Erum: And right now it's still a little bit challenging, but I don't know. it depends on what these experimental results show from this exercise, 'cause if we all get it right, then what's next? So, we'll t-talk about this more. We know a lot of people that talk about it. Our friends at Samvita, Moji talks about this.

[00:09:06] Erum: our f-friends at Roebling also talk about it. This idea of deployment, physical AI going out there and understanding what's going on and actually doing things. And we talk about execution is everything. So you can have the best technology in the world, but, you have to collaborate with people, orchestrate resources, get people on board and, scale to the level that is appropriate, not scale to infinity.

[00:09:32] Erum: that's like, we don't need to do that. but yeah, it's a huge exercise because, this angle for biomanufacturing is also cost. So these experimental protocols, we have to take into consideration the cost of the reagents And what that means. So there's a whole economic part of this class, which is very interesting too.

[00:09:54] Erum: So it's a lot, but you know, when you have thought partners like the students, 'cause we have great conversations in the Genspace node about this, so shout out to my team there. but even in class, and then of course you have AI, of course. I mean, that's baseline.

[00:10:09] Karl: So, before we transition to today's guest, I'm curious,you get some insight into all the other students that are participating.

[00:10:16] Karl: Are you seeing any de-extinction projects?

[00:10:20] Erum: not yet, but I can ask in our forum.

[00:10:23] Karl: Okay. I'm super curious. Do you know about the moa, by the way?

[00:10:27] Erum: no. What's the moa?

[00:10:29] Karl: So the moa is this giant flightless bird that is native to New Zealand, and it's been extinct for years. They're something like six or eight feet tall.

[00:10:39] Karl: They're gigantic.

[00:10:40] Erum: Oh, wow.

[00:10:41] Karl: Yeah. So this was just in the news because, "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson and Colossal, the de-extinction company based in Dallas, Texas, teamed up to buy a super rare ancient egg at a auction in Colorado. And,Colossal, of course, is focused on de-extincting.

[00:11:01] Karl: They were on the cover of Time magazine for de-extincting a dire wolf, and they've been working on a bunch of other animals and creating technologies for that. And in fact, they spun out a company that's just making the technology available for people. But they bought this egg and, of course,it seems like this is gonna be one of the targets that Colossal is going after, not just the woolly mammoth, but the moa.

[00:11:27] Karl: and what's interesting about this news is they have been collaborating with the indigenous people of New Zealand. and this egg that they bought is gonna end up in a museum in New Zealand. So it's not just, hey, this is gonna end up in, Peter Jackson's or Colossal's,private museum or collection, but it's actually going back to where it belongs.

[00:11:46] Karl: So I thought this was super interesting news, and I want you to check the how to biomanufacture anything to see if anybody is working on anything like this.

[00:11:55] Erum: Yes. this is so amazing. Colossal has been just the leading thinkers of this. I mean, they own the category of de-extinction.

[00:12:04] Erum: woolly mammoth being the first,mammal that they've been looking at. But there's been a series of efforts and collaborations, with different animals, and this moa bird would be incredible. I wonder what animal's eggs they're gonna put the DNA in, because that's how it has to happen, right?

[00:12:25] Erum: The de-extinction of the dire wolf wasn't that they just made a dire wolf in a lab. they had to take a wolf that's close in species to a dire wolf and, engineer the embryo to have characteristics of a dire wolf so when that embryo's born, it looks like a dire wolf. So that was the image that people saw on the magazine cover.

[00:12:49] Erum: So I wonder if they're gonna use flamingos. I don't know. I mean, what, emus? I'm trying to think of, like, tall birds.

[00:12:55] Karl: Probably emus or ostriches because they have humongous eggs. But I think,and listeners correct me if I'm wrong, I do believe that Colossal either has developed or has acquired some egg technology for incubating different animals.

[00:13:10] Karl: I mean, that comes straight out of, like, "Jurassic Park," because at the beginning of "Jurassic Park," they talk about all the companies that are being acquired by the company that creates the park, and I specifically remember one of them being an egg company.

[00:13:22] Erum: That's, like, the, the big takeaway. Everyone's like, "Why this company raise so much money?

[00:13:28] Erum: How do they raise so much money?" all the founders are like, "How do they do it?" Well, first of all, you got George Church, you got Ben Lamm, so these guys are, like, highly networked and successful people. But then it's the, all the technologies that have to be made in order for their outcome, right?

[00:13:45] Erum: De-extinction. So external wombs, I mean, that's a crazy thing, which is an egg, I guess. It's an external womb.

[00:13:54] Karl: I remember, when the sequel to the original "Blade Runner" came out, "Blade Runner 2049," one of the striking images is when they're birthing the replicants and it's, like, this big kinda plastic bag that is full of this amniotic fluid, and this full-sized replicant kinda slips out of it.

[00:14:13] Karl: The same time that was coming out, scientists had developed these artificial wombs that looked very similar to these kind of plastic bags, and they were using them for sheep. So these technologies have been advancing in the background and, there's the fiction and now here's the reality.

[00:14:29] Erum: Yeah. Science fiction has become science fact, folks.

[00:14:32] Karl: Yeah. So, at the end of the day, de-extinction is not unlike other kinds of biomanufacturing, it's just very focused on one thing, and that thing is incredibly important. But today, we're gonna be talking about biomanufacturing again with our guest, Max Kuffner.

[00:14:53] Karl: Iram, can you introduce Max to our audience?

[00:14:55] Erum: Yeah, absolutely. So, Max Kuffner is a co-founder and CEO of Again Bio.

[00:15:02] Erum: He was a venture capital investor at Atlantic, which is a leading early-stage fund in Berlin, and he led investments into many frontier technologies across space, defense, biotechnology, energy, and more. And we'll have to let Max Kuffner introduce you to the world of Again.

[00:15:20] Karl: Max Kufner of Again, we are so happy to have you on the Grow Everything podcast. Welcome.

[00:15:26] Max: Hi, thanks for having me.

[00:15:28] Karl: So let's start from right now, what's going on? How does Again turn industrial carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals? What's the one-liner?

[00:15:37] Max: Ooh, I-- that's actually a great question because one of the reasons we're here today is to talk about, acquisition of Genomatica, and I'd say that the one-liner, of our business has evolved over the last sort of fifteen years.

[00:15:47] Max: So we started the company as a research, endeavor at the DTU in Copenhagen, and then after ten years of R&D, we spun out and built a company. And the original kind of hero flagship product we were developing was utilizing CO2 as a feedstock. But over the last few years, as our product portfolio has grown and our technology portfolio has grown, we've, broadened our ambition essentially as a business, and we now,like to say that we are essentially a, developer of, biotechnology for industry.

[00:16:14] Max: And within that, there's a range of different things. One is CO2 as a feedstock. We also can use sugar as a feedstock, and we can make products, and we work with, companies to develop new products and pathways. And so,

[00:16:24] Max: To directly answer your question, one of the technologies that we have developed is a, a gas fermentation process where we've developed these microbes that essentially consume, C1 feedstocks or carbon dioxide, and convert that directly into products. The first product we make is something called acetate.

[00:16:40] Max: the layman will know that as vinegar. and we then upgrade that product into a range of different things, from commodity chemicals to glacial acetic acid, to midstream products, to specialty products in feed, food, proteins, and a bunch more. And so, that's obviously been a, a huge, I call it a hero flagship product for us because that's allowed us to have a very unique wedge into the biochemicals market and the, partnership models that unlocks for us to work with large incumbents to turn their waste gases and their waste products into valuable supply chains for them, which they love because not only is it cost-effective, it's more cost-effective than the solutions industry has today, but it also gives up the businesses that we partner with supply chain security, which is, given everything that's going on right now,one of the most important things, at least at the time of airing still with certain blockages, one of the most important things that our customers and partners are looking for.

[00:17:31] Erum: Yeah, that's amazing. You're checking off a lot of boxes there with Again and all of the value that it brings. but you teased a little bit about the acquisition of Genomatica. Tell us a little bit more about that. What does Geno bring to the table? Why did you guys acquire it, and, for Again that neither of you could achieve alone?

[00:17:50] Max: Yeah, great question. I think,ultimately going back to that mantra of what we're trying to achieve as a business is we want to be the leading developer of biotechnology for industry, and one of the ways to do that is to expand our product portfolio more and more.

[00:18:03] Max: the broader our product portfolio is, the more opportunities there are with our unique business model as both a manufacturing business and a licensor of technology to work with industrial partners. And, for example, we have a project in Texas where we work with Dow Chemical to convert their CO2 into, glacial acetic acid.

[00:18:21] Max: If we can continue to expand the scope into the range of products we can manufacture, that just opens up more partnership opportunities for us. And so one of the reasons that we, were lucky enough to partner with Genomatica is to expand our product portfolio, add in a range of, midstream products, specialty products that we can utilize directly from CO2, that allow us to, bring new solutions to the market.

[00:18:42] Max: You know, one of the things that we've developed in-house that makes us unique is, a world-class capability to take pathways that are currently utilizing sugar and rebuild them to utilize acetate as a feedstock. We have a grand thesis, which we've proven, that acetate can, for many pathways, not every pathway of course, but for many pathways can be, vastly economically superior.

[00:19:04] Max: and so, that's one of the main reasons for behind the acquisition. Another reason behind the acquisition is also the data play. Some people may still remember that Genomatica, dating back to when it was originally founded,was one of the, if not the world's leading, computational biology platform for industrial biotech.

[00:19:19] Max: And as a result, they have, large amounts of data and experience in running large scale fermentations and predicting,how something works at the smaller scale and how that will work at the, at, at the bigger scale. And combined with the computational models and technology that we've built allow us to bring to market one of the most unique biotechnology scale-up platforms, so to speak, to work with our partners and help them save hundreds of millions of dollars on cost and time.

[00:19:44] Karl: Now, in looking at your background, Max, you had been a VC, and, started working at Again part-time, and then you went all in at Again. What was the moment that you decided you had to run this company and put your savings into it and take it to the next level?

[00:20:01] Max: I was actually really nervous coming on this podcast because obviously you two are both esteemed biochemists and biotechnologists and, as you mentioned yourself, I come from venture capital, which is code for I don't know anything. at least that's how I feel about it. so, one of the things that I was fortunate enough when I was working venture capital is, I mean, I'm a huge sort of sci-fi nerd and techno-optimist.

[00:20:21] Max: Yeah. I love all sorts of cool technologies- Same ... of the future. Yeah, same here. Yeah? Yeah.

[00:20:24] Erum: Yeah.

[00:20:25] Max: What's your favorite sci-fi book?

[00:20:26] Erum: I would say, I like Annalee Newitz books. She's a bit more of a newer sci-fi author. and I have to give a shout-out to all of Kim Stanley Robinson, all of his books, because we're gonna have him on in a couple months

[00:20:38] Karl: Sick.

[00:20:39] Max: That's a good shout-out.

[00:20:39] Erum: Yeah. Carl, you just opened up a whole can of worms for Carl.

[00:20:43] Karl: Yeah. it's a long list, but I'll just say that I'm a huge William Gibson fan. Okay. Very cool ... and just keep it there. Yeah.

[00:20:50] Max: me and, our CTO, Conrad, are also big William Gibson fans, but my favorite is the Three Body trilogy.

[00:20:55] Max: that just blew my mind, And there's a- another great one if you haven't read it is There Is No Antimimetics Division. I don't know if you guys have come across that one, from QNTM. That one's very fun.

[00:21:06] Erum: Ooh.

[00:21:06] Karl: No, but that's very timely because, Irom and I are gonna be doing a live podcast at the Biomimetics Conference in a couple weeks.

[00:21:14] Erum: I'll have to read it.

[00:21:15] Max: Well, look, I'll get us back on track. so the, the question was, how I went from a VC to this. so I was fortunate enough to invest in a bunch of crazy,science related companies, space companies,satellite companies, energy companies, computational science.

[00:21:30] Max: and through that work, I got to know my co-founders, Torben and Alex, and they'd been working on the IP behind our business for about a decade. And not only did I love the core IP and the vision, so the core IP was the ability, the microbes that convert CO2 into acetate, and the vision was to build a huge biotech platform off the back of acetate and replace traditional sugar feedstocks, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that later.

[00:21:51] Max: But what I also loved was them individually, and we got along so well. And so we did a really unique deal that I would help them as a VC spin out the IP and s- kind of structure what a company could look like. and I'd spend a few hours, per week with them, and, those hours became days and weeks, and we just got along so well that I realized at one point that, I can always be a venture capitalist.

[00:22:13] Max: but this opportunity felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity to build a truly defining biotechnology business. And so, it was a bit of a no-brainer. Made the leap about three and a half years ago. and here we are, still at it.

[00:22:25] Erum: Yeah. Welcome, to the bioeconomy.

[00:22:29] Erum: We are pleased to have you.

[00:22:32] Karl: We need more of you, science fiction fans that see the potential and the future.

[00:22:37] Erum: And can execute. That's the biggest thing. Like, that's amazing. So since you t- talked about acetate as a platform, which I'm really excited to talk about, so acetate in this case acts as a biofeedstock that can outperform sugar by 33% in yields while eliminating land use pressure.

[00:22:56] Erum: So why is feedstock flexibility the single most critical factor for the next generation of industrial biomanufacturing?

[00:23:03] Max: Yeah, I mean, I think there's two angles that I take this, which is, one is just simple cost. The, the unit economics of fermenting certain products on acetate, is just in some of those products vastly superior.

[00:23:15] Max: And, often it's that 10% or that 15% or even that 6% yield that can be the delta between a process being economical and non-economical. And so, one of our grand thesis is that we can open up a wave of bio-innovation simply by having a cheaper feedstock and, a more efficient, feedstock on a carbon gram for gram basis.

[00:23:35] Max: now going into exactly why that works that way, that's something for my co-founders. They can obviously tell you all about, the various pathways that you save through glycolysis, But what I can talk about on the other side of things is the impracticality of sugar as a feedstock.

[00:23:49] Max: Now obviously it is, in its own right, very useful. We've had a huge amount of, bio fermentation processes that very successfully ferment on sugar today. Where do they do that? By a cornfield, right? or wherever else that, you can get huge amounts of sugar and not have to ship it around.

[00:24:04] Max: But the products that they make, the customers that want those products are usually not also co-located on a cornfield. They're co-located where we're co-located in Houston, right? Where there's oil, where there's gas, where there's electricity, where there's energy and abundant resources. And so you have this, hugely constraining function that you have to find these sugar feedstocks, you have to co-locate with them, you have to make the product, and you have to ship it to where the customers actually want it.

[00:24:28] Max: What's great about our technology is we can integrate directly with the customer, right? We can basically sit down with someone like Dow or some other large corporate of which we're talking to all of them, and we're developing projects with all of them, and we can say, "Look, we can on your site right here where you need the product, make the product from your feedstock.

[00:24:44] Max: We're not gonna sell you a biochemical that has to be made, in the middle of nowhere." and then there's a whole other ongoing, I think this is a traditional ongoing issue that you guys will actually know much better than me, which is, there's competition for that sugar for all sorts of different uses, whether it's, like you said, land use, whether it's feed and food and all these kind of things.

[00:25:03] Max: And so, if we can swap out sugar for waste carbon dioxide, I think that sounds pretty sweet.

[00:25:09] Erum: No pun intended.

[00:25:11] Karl: Yeah, and it's interesting because we just came back from this Bio-Innovations conference in Omaha, Nebraska, which some would argue is the middle of nowhere, but it's the center of the country and it's surrounded by cornfields. And then I went to Houston and got a good introduction to the kind of biotech ecosystem there.

[00:25:28] Karl: And as you said, there's a huge need to kinda, shrink supply chains, localize production, and this idea of shipping, either feedstock or really anything, across an ocean seems to be going away. Now, one of the things you guys are doing, if I understand it right, is you're co-locating bioreactors, and you mentioned it, right at the place, right at a facility where a client needs the end product.

[00:25:53] Karl: If someone walked into your production facility, whether in Copenhagen or in Houston, what would they actually see?

[00:25:58] Max: Well, actually the first thing you'd see is you'd see,a bunch of, petrochemical backdrop and refineries and, chemical manufacturing plants. And then, you'd also see a large purple bioreactor just standing in front of them all. And that's our site in Texas, which next time you're in town, you're very welcome to come and visit.

[00:26:16] Max: so, the great thing about our technology is that, these bioreactors are tall but narrow, so we don't need a huge amount of, land space, and we can essentially consume all the gases of a very large plant without needing a huge amount of, foot space. And we compress the gases, we pump them into these bioreactors, and we have these very normal looking, off-the-shelf almost bioreactors where you pump the gases in and you ferment it, and produce product.

[00:26:38] Max: So that's really... It doesn't look any different from any other bio fermentation site that you'd see. Reactors are a little bit narrower, a little bit taller. That's pretty much it. There's a downstream and then, we load things onto trucking bays and shipping bays and, ideally we also pipe them directly into our customer's feedstock so they can reuse the product.

[00:26:56] Erum: Nice. Nice. That missing piece for circular manufacturing sounds amazing. Definitely something in a... In sci-fi, we need some more positive sci-fi too, the solar punk futures. We need a bit more of that. so, thanks for painting that picture.

[00:27:10] Max: our CTO, Konrad, and I will have him explain the science behind it, but he's very adamant that this is the single best technology to make food on Mars.

[00:27:19] Karl: Yeah. We have to have him on.

[00:27:22] Erum: We talk about space a lot too here. We've had about, four or five episodes where we interview people working on space biomanufacturing or biology in space. so we'll have to-- a playlist and we'll send it to you guys, but then we'll have to have your colleague on.

[00:27:35] Max: Very cool. Definitely.

[00:27:37] Erum: So we're at the point in the episode we're have to talk about AI. So we waited this long, okay? and so AI and computational modeling, of course, have been making huge strides in biology. yet a lot of those designs they don't take the physical economic manufacturing aspect into account, and it makes it very difficult if you don't have real world data.

[00:27:58] Erum: So we wanna know from you, where does AI generally accelerate bioprocessing, and where does it completely fall down when hit with real world physics?

[00:28:09] Max: I mean, one of the things that I remember surprised me when I was at BC was for how long the bio industry has already been using AI.

[00:28:16] Max: Obviously, it was a different version pr- predated these LLMs, but, it's almost like when AI became a thing in biotech, everyone's like, "Yeah, okay. we've been using these, what if models,for decades now." And I think where the labs are trying to go...

[00:28:29] Max: is obviously it's a huge application space, right? it's a technology that makes a huge amount of sense. If you can just find a way to decode the huge amounts of data and essentially put it back together again, you can develop new insights, new products, et cetera.

[00:28:41] Max: And, the greatest market in the world is essentially the human body and human health, and obviously a lot of people are focusing on pharma, and I get it. What we've seen is that very, very practically, designing new things isn't really the struggle. Coming up with a new idea, coming up with a new molecule, with a new product, mining that idea space isn't really the, the challenge that needs to be solved.

[00:29:06] Max: What actually is the kind of barrier is getting things into market. And why do things not get into market? On the pharma level, it's 'cause you have, clinical trials, and you have to test it in a statistically relevant sample of people. And at the end of the day, we don't yet have the models that can like, with 100% accuracy, predict how Carl's body is gonna react to a drug.

[00:29:22] Max: And so we have to, do a bunch of like AB testing, with humans. but similar when you think about like anything non-pharma related, if we talk about bringing a new molecule to market, or we talk about a new pathway, anything like that,how are you gonna scale it up? How will the economics work?

[00:29:34] Max: Will the production process break? Finally, the product that comes out, is it viable? Can you drop it into existing production pathways? Will it, have any other negative externalities? And all that stuff takes, decades and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. I mean, the stat that I kind of used earlier, in pharma, they say that a new drug takes ten years and costs a billion dollars.

[00:29:54] Max: In chemicals and materials, it's really not that far away of the same thing. It's ten years, and it's hundred to two, three, four hundred million dollars. And so the rate of progress has actually been slowing, and the bottleneck to that progress is not the discovery piece, it's the scale-up piece. And so that's why we've been very intentional about the way that we've built our business to unlock the benefits of that, which is, we build assets ourselves, we license our technology into assets, we use those assets to generate a huge amount of data.

[00:30:24] Max: That data then feeds our models, and that allows us to build accurate scaled-down models. And this is actually paraphrasing from my co-founder, Torben, who's obviously way smarter than me. And, he said that what all the AI companies in science are trying to do is they're trying to, do scale-up models.

[00:30:40] Max: They're trying to predict how something will work at large scale. Now, that doesn't give you any statistical accuracy. What you actually need to do is you need to have large scale operations data and then essentially retrofit that back to scale down, and that's when you can then close the loop between large scale production and the lab.

[00:30:53] Max: And we have that now. And, one of the reasons that we did acquire Genomanika is to be able to, expand that offering and have even better models with even more data that allow us with even greater predictability to forecast how something at the smallest stage will work at large scale.

[00:31:07] Max: And, as an example, we can with extremely high accuracy predict how something in the lab will operate at large scale. And that allows us to work with our partners to accelerate the development in a way that is actually trusted, verifiable, bankable, and has a guarantee that it'll succeed rather than prodding around in the dark and wasting hundreds of millions of dollars.

[00:31:27] Max: So that's what we do. I think that also kind of helped-- I, I don't know if that really answered the whole question. I went on a bunch of tangents there, but I hope it was directionally where you were hoping to go.

[00:31:36] Erum: Yes, it was. Ugh, you said all the things I was hoping you'd say.

[00:31:41] Karl: Yeah, I mean, let me just make sure I got it right.

[00:31:43] Karl: It just seems like, you've got enough data, and you've gotten this data from actually the work that you've done, and that in turn will make it easier to predict, future deployments and their success before they're even deployed. Is that about right?

[00:31:57] Max: Y- yeah, exactly. go- going back to the, the whole, what are the AI labs doing is, what the AI labs doing at today is they've scoured all the publicly available data, right?

[00:32:05] Max: I mean, this is not to talk negatively about the founder of DeepMind. he has a Nobel Prize and I have zero. between us we have one. but you know, the, solving the protein folding thing was super cool, but how many true biological breakthroughs has that led to? Not that many yet, because what you really need to do is not have these kind of static models.

[00:32:24] Max: You need predictive models that can understand how a cell works, how a process works at scale. and that's the angle that we're trying to go on. And that's why having real world data from, both 10 years of academia, but also our upscaling and now the acquisition of Geno, that is one of the largest, databases for that in the world, is allowing us to do really interesting stuff on that front.

[00:32:41] Karl: Amazing. So let's kind of go back to your origins as a VC and move beyond engineering. One of the things you've pointed out, in our research on you is you said that, a real bottleneck for climate tech is financial. That means having to reconcile high return venture capital expectations with low risk infrastructure style returns.

[00:33:03] Karl: how do you structure project SPVs and partnerships with the Dow, McCary, and Helm to solve that financial problem? It also sounds like it's financial engineering.

[00:33:13] Max: It definitely is financial engineering. I mean, that's the short of it. I think going back to the kind of more fundamental thesis of mine, which is,all climate innovation, and I take it beyond just climate, all deep tech innovation is-- not all.

[00:33:28] Max: A lot of deep tech innovation is more of a finance problem than it is a technology problem. I saw this a lot as a venture capitalist, people will come with the most amazing ideas. They've spent their entire, life researching a particular molecule or process or technology or anything like that, and it's gonna take a billion dollars to get there.

[00:33:44] Max: And obviously, the size of the prize can be phenomenally large, but raising the billion dollars is actually arguably a harder skill than it is to necessarily get the technology to a point where it can, be successful at scale. And so, our whole thesis has always been how do we build this business in a way that can grow incredibly quickly, but also is managing these kind of two different expectations of asset classes, right?

[00:34:08] Max: Venture capitalists want essentially 30% IRRs, spread across a portfolio of companies. You have to have way higher IRRs than that. And by the way, those IRRs were pre-Anthropic days. Now they probably want, 200% IRRs. but then an infrastructure investor is looking for a relatively solid seven to 10%, return.

[00:34:24] Max: And how do you marry those two things up? And the way that we go around that is,we've been very select around, both financing partners that we work with, but also validating our technology in a way that allows us to raise debt capital to structure newcos, and those newcos actually license the technology back from us, and we then go and go and build these, these newcos.

[00:34:45] Max: And, sometimes we build them ourselves, sometimes we build them with partnership with our existing, customers, so they will actually co-own the newco, they will invest, they will capitalize the newco. and that's where it all goes back to us finding products and pathways and solutions that are highly in demand for our customers, because if they're, in enough demand, then your customers will also be willing to ensure that capacity comes online and co-finance that.

[00:35:07] Max: And so, I wouldn't say we've solved all of it, but we've, been able to attract a large amount of capital partners for this structure, and it's definitely helped us accelerate the business.

[00:35:16] Erum: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that.we do have a lot of founders, of deep tech companies, of biotech companies, of course, and a lot of them come from academia.

[00:35:25] Erum: They just had a PhD, and the model that they see for creating companies is usually just raising venture capital. And so to give them more examples of how to structure deals or with not only, like, the end customer but multiple partners, is what they need to hear. So thank you so much for that.

[00:35:43] Max: Yeah, and just to add one more thing.

[00:35:44] Max: I think for, if anyone is listening to what I have to say, one thing that's super helpful is looking at the-- there's a few businesses that unfortunately didn't do as well as we'd hoped, but I think are still a great case study. One is called Stegra, which used to be called H2 Green Steel, who make green steel,out of Sweden.

[00:36:01] Max: The other one is Northvolt, which, you may know is a battery recycling manufacturer that unfortunately also didn't make it. But the model that they employed I still think is the right one to think about, which is a lot of deep tech founders with a great idea focus on their technology, and it's like this technology will get to market in this way.

[00:36:17] Max: And what they did, and we took a leaf out of some of the elements of the book, is these other businesses said, "Look, let's focus on where the commercial demand is, 'cause if we can validate the commercial demand, then you make it much easier to underwrite the technology risk." And so they would go and they'd get these huge contracts with large blue chip customers who really wanted to buy that product before they started developing the product.

[00:36:38] Max: And it's very similar to like a traditional-- it's what people said about tech, 10, 15 years ago. Like, the mechanical tuck, fake it till you make it kind of thing. And I think a lot of deep tech founders don't do that. they're so focused on building their solution that the market comes second.

[00:36:51] Max: And I actually think it has to be the inverse. I think you build the market demand first, and that allows you to do the rest, because it makes it much easier also for someone to invest in your business if they don't have to worry about the commercial risk. Then you're taking a tech risk, and that's fine.

[00:37:03] Max: But if you have to do both, that's an uncomfortable place to be. So, that's also the playbook we follow.

[00:37:08] Erum: Oh. Oh, yeah. Amazing. Get the commercial interest first. Stop spending so much time talking to investors, pitching 200 investors. Pitch your cl- customers. pitch your customers- Exactly

[00:37:19] Erum: try to get a deal. Exactly.

[00:37:21] Max: Yeah.

[00:37:21] Erum: so, you're in Europe, you also have business in the US, and they operate differently. And you've argued that Europe is structurally disadvantaged for deep tech scale-ups and have called out- Have I argued

[00:37:32] Max: that?

[00:37:33] Erum: Yeah. That's a risky argue. Have you? Have you? Okay.

[00:37:34] Erum: Well, let's see. Let's see. Yeah. Let's see. Let's see where the question's going. Yeah. and you've called out dogmatic subsidy models compared to Houston. So how are you navigating the regulatory hurdles as you scale across Denmark, Norway and beyond in Europe?

[00:37:48] Max: Okay, now I know where that question was going.

[00:37:50] Max: I was worried for a second. I think there's a, a few different data points, some of which are maybe a little bit,m-more aggressive potentially than others. at the end of the day, if you look at the Total amount of kind of, $100 billion plus businesses built in Europe in the last decade versus the US, I'm pretty sure in Europe there's been zero, and in the US there's been, a huge amount.

[00:38:10] Max: And so there's one thing which is the US just has a phenomenal culture of entrepreneurialism and, building great businesses and dreaming for great outcomes that we don't have in the same way in Europe some would argue that it's cultural, some would argue that it's socioeconomic, some would argue that it's political.

[00:38:26] Max: It's probably a little bit of all of those things. I think what makes it very difficult for us to build our business in Europe is often the regulatory hurdles put in place to develop something quickly, which is one of the reasons we are in Texas. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think the permitting time for our facility in Texas was a fraction, several orders of magnitudes quicker than it would have been in Europe.

[00:38:47] Max: I don't think in Europe the production facility would be online yet. We managed to build it in two hundred and eighty-three days from groundbroke- breaking to first product in Texas, which for a petrochemical plant is insanely fast.

[00:39:00] Erum: Wow, within a year. Yeah. Amazing.

[00:39:01] Max: Exactly. And so, I think if we were trying to do this in Europe, we'd probably still be permitting, and that just doesn't work for a startup, right? We have to move as quickly as possible 'cause we have to, prove milestones and grow the business and so, that was, I think, the origin story of that particular quip.

[00:39:16] Max: but generally speaking, it's been very good for us as a business to benefit from multiple different regions we operate in. There have been some cultural learnings that we managed to take on from the US around, moving quickly and being entrepreneurial. But at the same time, and this is where we are very proud to be a European company, where we're headquartered, Denmark, and where I live in Munich are two of the, deep tech capitals of Europe that are just continuing to accelerate and do great stuff.

[00:39:41] Max: Especially Denmark is, this is very well known to anyone that lives in Denmark, but people often forget about it. Denmark has not one, but two hundred billion dollar plus market cap biotechnology businesses, right? There's Novo Nordisk and there's Novo Nordisk, and, that in and of itself is pretty incredible.

[00:39:57] Max: There's then, the beer brewing companies and the food companies and, so Denmark has a long history of producing phenomenal biotechnologies and biotechnologists. And so we still we get that talent pool that we have, and that's why our headquarters is in Copenhagen. But then we also like to kind of dabble in other, cultural values to help, be entrepreneurial and accelerate.

[00:40:17] Karl: Yeah. That's amazing. and as I understand it, you do have a facility that is operational in, Copenhagen. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[00:40:25] Max: We did. we had a demo scale plant, in, just south of Copenhagen, which we decommissioned about a, I think about a year and a half ago. But it was our first foray out of the lab, and it was phenomenal.

[00:40:35] Max: it was on the same site as a wastewater treatment facility, so we're taking the CO2 from wastewater treatment, and we were converting it into acetate it was, yeah, very lucky that we found a defunct secondhand bioreactor that sort of fit our needs, even though we couldn't sterilize it or clean it or do anything, like that with it.

[00:40:52] Max: and we still managed to get our process to work, which speaks for the technical resilience of it.

[00:40:57] Karl: Amazing. And then you do have something coming online in Norway, right?

[00:41:03] Max: We do, yes. so that's actually,and this is why I wanted to be careful about my words around, the grant funding the policy landscape.

[00:41:08] Max: we do have a grant project that we, have with the European Union, where there's a project called the Pyro CO2 Project that is funded, with about 43 million euros, probably about $50 million, to scale up our technology and develop a range of products, way beyond acetate, acetone, but going into midstream specialty products.

[00:41:28] Max: I think 17 different products, something like that, will be made there. That should be coming online, I think, in the next six months, but don't quote me on that. I think, yeah, some-sometimes soon, hopefully.

[00:41:38] Karl: Okay. So you've got the learnings from south of Copenhagen. You've got a new facility coming online in, in Norway.

[00:41:43] Karl: You've got lessons from Houston where we've got a facility. What's been the most unexpected operational friction point or scale-up surprise that you and your team had to overcome?

[00:41:55] Max: I'd actually like to add, I think, through the acquisition of Genomatic, and we also have several licensed plants that we've licensed our technology into.

[00:42:00] Max: So, we have, several clients, that have built facilities using our technology around the world, in the US, in Vietnam, in Italy. and we are also, building more and more projects. So I think, the... I have actually never calculated this, but the total installed capacity of, the way our technology is used is approaching very significant scale.

[00:42:21] Max: and we're building more projects. So we're developing projects across the globe, in the US, in Europe, and in, in Asia at the moment. and so we're just continuing to ramp up and scale.

[00:42:30] Erum: Amazing. Okay, so now we're gonna ask the final question before our quick-fire round. So here we go. And this question's really, this is what you think about day in and day out, which is the future of the company.

[00:42:41] Erum: you read sci-fi, and we wanna know what needs to happen economically and technologically for carbon negative chemicals to become the default industry standard rather than a niche premium product?

[00:42:54] Max: I mean, I would say that on a, I th- I actually think that's super simple. They just need to be priced the same. they don't have to be priced lower, right? Because like for like, if you can buy my product or you can buy, a, a petrochemical product that has huge emissions, why wouldn't you buy my product if they're at the exact same price?

[00:43:12] Max: you get downstream benefits that you can say that you're carbon negative. maybe it's going to CPG products and, So I think cost parity is the only thing that matters, and I think that's actually, even though it sounds simple, it's a super important heuristic because that is the only thing that matters.

[00:43:26] Max: And we've built our business around the mantra that we're not gonna get a green premium for anything. I think that's served us well. that's also why we've been a little bit more, I'd say, intellectually flexible around where we scale up our production. We went for the Gulf Coast, right? No one in the Gulf Coast gives a shit about how green our product is.

[00:43:41] Max: they care about the fact that we, build fast and make money and create jobs and all those kind of things. And so, I think that's probably the, the single most important thing. and yeah, that's what we're striving to do across every product that we make. We want it to be, cost competitive, and we want it to then, the second thing, is be superior.

[00:43:57] Max: Often a lot of biochemical, bioproducts, biosolutions, not just chemicals. We make feed, food, proteins, specialties. We make fertilizers. every product that we develop, we don't just want it to be cheaper, but we want it to be better. And often that can be cleaner. You get a lot of products that are made, purer through a biochemical process than it is through a traditional sy-synthetic process.

[00:44:18] Max: We have some products that are simply superior than the traditional synthetic and,alternative just to the way that, you know, it binds in a formulation. And so really that like the, the vision that we have is, biology is fundamentally for a huge amount of things, a better technology, and it's our job to make sure that we make it as cost-effective as possible.

[00:44:36] Karl: All right, so we've reached the quick-fire part of this interview. So,

[00:44:40] Max: Okay. In the ultimate climate tech showdown, who wins? An AI model designing a strain in five seconds, or a mechanical engineer fixing a leaky valve in five minutes?

[00:44:52] Max: Ooh, I don't even know how to bucket that. I mean, generally, as you may have been able to tell from my thesis earlier, I think that an AI designing a strain is relatively worthless, so just on that basis alone, by process of elimination, the mechanical engineer wins.

[00:45:05] Erum: Wow. Great answer.

[00:45:09] Karl: Okay. What's more satisfying, hitting a technical yield milestone or closing a project finance deal with one of your banks

[00:45:16] Max: My co-founder TJ is gonna kill me because he'd vote the former, but I'll definitely vote the latter. and the rationale is that ultimately the latter is a sign that your technology has been validated at scale, and so, it's the commercialization element that I was talking about earlier.

[00:45:30] Erum: Yeah. That's the hat you're wearing. I get it. Okay. In an epic biotech heist movie, who's a team mastermind: the VC who wrote the check, the computational biologist, or the engineer holding a wrench?

[00:45:45] Max: Sorry.

[00:45:45] Erum: What?

[00:45:46] Erum: Questions are so silly.

[00:45:48] Max: Sorry. Sorry. Okay. In, in-- so are you asking me, I'm gonna try and make a soccer analogy. So like who is the Lionel Messi of a biotech company, so to speak?

[00:45:58] Karl: Yeah. There you go.

[00:45:59] Max: I don't have an answer for that, and I know that's super boring, and I wish I could give you more spicy content, but these innovations are...

[00:46:06] Max: One of the things that we pride ourselves a lot on in our business is that we've built a multidisciplinary team that works closely together. And so you have, computational scientists, you have, lab scientists, you have fermentation scientists, we have engineers, we have the commercial team, and everyone works together to genuinely, like, on a super iterative basis to develop technologies.

[00:46:24] Max: That thing I was talking about earlier, we are constantly in dialogue with the market, trying to understand what they want. Within a few hours, the tech team is doing something to reflect that. So I'll give it to you in, in, in the soccer analogy again.

[00:46:35] Max: I am a big believer in the Dutch philosophy of total football, which is, everyone's a part of the team. and this is where I'm probably a little bit European. I'm less individualistic. we don't do like a LeBron James we'll get you the ring kind of thing. so sorry for the lame answer, but that's how I feel.

[00:46:51] Karl: No, but you would think that, I mean, I'm a huge total soccer fan as well, and, Spain demonstrated this year in the World Cup how effectively that works. You'd think more teams would come to realize that, and I'm just thinking of Brazil's loss against Germany. I don't remember. It was a stunning loss in Brazil, and you would've thought that Brazil would've learned the lesson as well, but teams continue to play that star player game when really when it's the whole team working together and being able to play any position that really makes that difference.

[00:47:21] Max: Yeah, but I guess then a good question would be who would be the Lionel Messi of the biotech world to then try and transfer in, and what would the impli- I don't know. I'm not gonna answer that one. Yeah.

[00:47:31] Erum: that's wraps up our questions. Um, thank you. Oh,

[00:47:33] Max: Thank you, guys, so much. I had a really good time.

[00:47:36] Karl: thank you so much, Max, for coming on the Grow Everything podcast.

[00:47:39] Karl: Iram, what did you think of that episode? It was great. Max, for being someone who is a new CEO to the world of biomanufacturing, he really knew his stuff. it's great when you meet people who didn't necessarily get their PhD in bio and become the CEO. He's had great experience across venture, across other organizations and how they scale, as you heard from how he responded to the questions.

[00:48:09] Erum: And he really talked about just how do we have that real-world production and getting, of course, lab to scale. So- Max argued that designing a strain isn't enough. you have to think about scale first. And this was really critical in his thinking when the team got together to acquire Geno, right?

[00:48:32] Erum: And Geno was there with all of their data, all of their real-world data, and together they're this, amazing AI discovery and design with industrial scale-up.

[00:48:44] Karl: Yeah. I was really excited to have, Max on because we'd always wanted to get someone from Geno on, and then as soon as this acquisition happened, it just made a lot of sense to talk to Max and, the team from Again.

[00:48:55] Karl: So I was really super happy to get him on. One thing that he mentioned is, this kind of deep technology, and we talk about this a lot on the podcast. It's not just go and raise venture capital. It needs different kinds of financial engineering. you need to be able to maybe separate your technology funding, the development of your technology funding from the financing that is going to make it possible to build a facility.

[00:49:21] Karl: So there's a lot of different kinds of ways of funding things. there's debt financings, there's licensing. You can get customers to co-invest with you. And Max's point to all of that was raising the capital scale can be harder than proving the technology itself, but it's something that's super necessary.

[00:49:37] Erum: Yeah. And then how do you get that type of financing? And a lot of that has to be because you sell the demand first before you build the supply. One of the biggest pieces of advice, I, I would say, or takeaways for founders that are technical, that have an amazing innovation, sell the demand first, then raise it to financing.

[00:50:00] Erum: It could be venture capital or the other models that we discussed in the episode. but that's... M-Max's advice to founders was secure customer interest early, and then investors are happy to underwrite the technology risk. So very important words of advice there.

[00:50:18] Karl: that also goes back to what you said at the beginning of the episode and, a drum that we've been beating here on the podcast.

[00:50:24] Karl: you know, this idea that discovery is being commoditized means that this orchestration is more important than ever, and we talk about it a lot here. I think it's gonna be something you hear from us a lot more. The other thing that Max mentioned that we've talked a lot about on this podcast is that green is not enough.

[00:50:41] Karl: The product has to compete. We talk about performance being important, but cost parity, particularly when you talk about carbon negative chemicals is what matters when you're talking about commodity chemicals. So look at Again's website, it makes a broader pitch around cleaner, cheaper products and supply chains that are less dependent on petrochemicals, and that's in the news every day.

[00:51:05] Karl: How do we increase, local supplies? How do we decrease this idea of shipping things around the world? And,my hat goes off to, Max and his team for what they're accomplishing.

[00:51:17] Erum: Yeah, absolutely. We should get Max to come to the how to biomanufacture almost anything class and share the economic commercial aspect of biomanufacturing.

[00:51:26] Erum: So, so great.

[00:51:27] Karl: For sure. As you listen to this, we're about a week out from attending Biomimetics International in Minnesota. please, if you're gonna attend, come and see us. It's November 9th and 10th in, Minneapolis. And we've got a lot of exciting episodes coming up with some of the most exciting pioneers in their fields, people focused on conservation, sci-fi authors, and heads of companies that are innovating and to grow the bioeconomy.

[00:51:56] Erum: Yes. And thank you so much for tuning into the Grow Everything podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to us. We are listening. Our contact information is in the show notes. And don't forget to subscribe to our Substack to get your dose of Grow Everything delivered straight to your inbox.

[00:52:12] Erum: Let's grow.

[00:52:13] Karl: Let's grow.