170. There's a Bug for That: Sophia Xu on CarbonBridge's Notebook Bioreactors

Sophia [00:00:00] let's let biology do its thing. But before we were kind of limiting it with the existing infrastructure and now we've really unlocked and unleashed the potential of these microbes.

Erum Hey Carl. How's it going?

Karl Iam, you've missed out on a great event. I hung out with a bunch of, inve biotech investors last night at a coffee shop listening to, ambient music.

Erum Wow. That's a different experience from the, networking at a bar loud music everywhere. People talking over maybe some music from the nineties now a Japanese listening experience. That's cool. What'd you guys talk about? What was it like?

Karl we listened to an album called Sakura. by Susumu Yakota, who was a Japanese techno and ambient music, producer. And, you're not supposed to talk while you listen. sakura, is a four side album. So once I got to side DI moved [00:01:00] myself away from the crowd so I could actually have a conversation with one of the investors. Away from the crowd. And what's interesting is the space is set up so that you can have a bunch of people grouped in one part of the room. 'cause you've got these two really incredible speakers, but then you can move to the other end of the coffee shop and have a good conversation. And the music is still equally loud, but you at least can have the conversation. And then once the D side was played. Everybody, was able to talk. it was an interesting experience to sit around. I've gone to a lot of meditation, group meditations where you sit around like that, but never were you listening to music. So that was fun.

Erum only in Brooklyn can you have those experience.

Karl apparently these listening bars are a big thing in Japan. jazz listening bars, and there's a couple that are legendary and you unfortunately could make it because you were sick. What the hell happened?

Erum Yeah, so I had gone to an indoor waterpark for my son's birthday, and I think that's [00:02:00] what did it, Karl. I mean, they have hundreds of people in this indoor wet environment and it's humid. I'm sure those kids are not rushing to the bathroom when they have to go. They're ready enough. Oh geez. Environment. Geez. I mean, anyway, like for me, like I'm complaining about it now, but it was fun experience, I would say like just going down water slides and just being with my son and doing all the fun things you would do at a waterpark. Really cool. It was at the American Dream Mall, so things, I think it is a, the largest indoor water parks.

Erum it was like 30 degrees outside. So it's a fun little getaway. Nice. In the winter. but I had to pay for it. Yeah. I paid the price. I missed out on that fun event that he went to, but here I am. It might sound a little nasally, but I am, I'm trudging through this. I don't have a fever. I feel good.

Karl Good. So one of the things that we wanted to let our audience is that Synonym has changed their name to [00:03:00] Robling. you had a hint of this. I kind of had a hint at it. I thought that Robing was just gonna be one of their products, but we couldn't talk about it on the interview.

Erum Yes, yes. So we had this interview with Joshua just a few episodes ago, and we knew that they were going to change their name, but we had to bite our lip, make sure we didn't say anything, because of course you have to have a formal launch and they have done that. So everyone updated their LinkedIns and Wow. I mean, if you take a look at Roebling's demo video, how they're using AI to project plan industrial Biomanufacturing Like is incredible, incredibly fast, incredibly thorough, and very simple to use. Just LLMs, just writing. Do, do, do, do, do. Just typing in prompts, asking questions, having the AI think critically on how to create process for Biomanufacturing and other manufacturing. It doesn't have to be biomanufacturing, you know, they, could take a wider lens now that they have this tool in place.

Erum But let's think about that a little bit because, SYNONYM has had a [00:04:00] great exposure to the biotech industry. They have created other tools that companies have used, especially startup companies, on. How to first identify where there's fermentation capacity around the world. So people were able to navigate that, interact with that piece of software, asking what type of, things they need to run their biomanufacturing processes on site. So that's one tool that they had running open free. I think, actually, I don't know if it. But it was around for a few years for anyone to use. And then they also had another software,

Erum capacitor was for the fermentation capacity and scaler was for their techno economic analysis or lifecycle analysis software that people would put in all of their processes to determine is there an economic, Value to be had with their process how much would it cost to make their products? And what is the environmental or health impact of their products? So, um, very cool that they had [00:05:00] all of this data. I'm curious to learn if that has informed their new piece of software, which under the Robing umbrella helps. to create these biomanufacturing processes,Yeah, I think what we have to do is we have to get both Edward and Joshua on to talk about this, in a couple of weeks or months. So that we can get a better picture of what Rubing is really focused on. But these tools are incredible and, I'd like to go behind the scenes and kick the tires a little bit to find out exactly what they've learned, in their few years of existence, Yes. Yes. Yep. Exactly. And again, maybe it's something we like, have them do a live demo and we're like, Hey, look, how do you buy manufacture food dye? Yeah. Let's do it right now. Live. Yeah. And then people can, you know, it's really great to see demos, I mean, pitch decks. Okay. You know, get an idea, but there's nothing like seeing the actual product. So, very cool.

Karl Yeah. Especially in IRL. Yes. In real life.

Erum Yes, yes, yes. That's the best.

Karl you know, I mean, you've experienced this where you've had to do demos and you've been at a [00:06:00] number of startups, into doing these things. Can you talk about your experience?

Erum Yes. Yeah, I mean, I've worked at a variety of startups. Obviously the startups that are software based or SaaS platforms are easier. Demo, I'm not a programmer, but, always worked with a CTO, and to be able to create software, obviously now it's super easy. Back in the day it was a little bit harder, but yeah, it's easier to demo. I had worked at a nanotechnology startup, which was the first startup that I actually joined in my experience. And it was about, 14, 15 years ago. What they did was they converted waste carbon emissions into carbon nanotubes.

Erum And I remember

Karl that.

Erum Yeah. And it was like ahead of its time. Now, using waste gas is much more common, which is the topic of today's interview. But back in the day it was very hard to wrap your head around, and it still is. I mean, now, yeah, we have more carbon

Karl waste. What is that?

Erum Yeah, carbon gas waste, you know, like waste [00:07:00] gases.

Erum Yeah. Carbon gas waste. Yeah. It's like how, what is that? How do you. Compress it and, the company I worked with at first, it was called Damascus Fortune, then it was called Carbon Continuum. I did a lot of the, the BD aspect of it. I don't have a background in nanotechnology. It was more my background's in chemistry, but it was, Building this reactor in order pull the waste gases into the reactor. It was able to use this, it was called like carbon vapor deposition is like the process to be able to make carbon nanotubes from carbon emissions. And there's a variety of different types of carbon nanotubes, depending on the purity of the gases, and there's hyper pure carbon fibers that you could use for like a, semiconductors and electronics. Then there's ones that are called multi walled carbon nanotubes that can be used to make materials. And that was insane.

Erum That was my first startup experience. but it was amazing. It really opened doors to a lot of opportunities. That's when I first started [00:08:00] participating accelerator programs pitching to investors. So I had to pitch this company to investors. I pitched on stage in Barcelona, so I did a little bit of Spanish to, speak to the audience. It was bizarre, but that was my introduction into being able to look at how to use waste gases and make valuable products, which is the topic of today's interview, and we're interviewing Sophia Xu of Carbon Bridge.

Karl I'm super excited about this interview because we've had a number of people come on and talk about how they feed microbes with gas. That includes Cemvita, Lanzatech, Mango Materials and industrial microbes.

Karl Each one of those companies has a different take on taking. Methane gas or carbon containing gas and turn it into a valuable material. And so now we'll hear from Sophia Shu and her, experience with her company Carbon Bridge.

Karl Sophia Shoe of Carbon Bridge. We are so happy to have you on the Grow Everything Podcast.

Sophia Thank you so much. Really appreciate the opportunity.

Karl so you've had a super interesting path. you were publishing cancer research when you were a teenager. You turned down medical school and you ended up starting co-founding Carbon Bridge. That's an extraordinary path. What was a moment that made you choose building a climate biotech over practicing medicine?

Sophia Yeah, I mean, when you put it like that, it does sound very extraordinary. but I will say as the person going through it, it definitely did not feel like that at the time. Well, I would say about moving towards climate technologies.

Sophia I think that I was actually always inclined to be in this space. of course my parents were very much focused on med school, the kind of stability, and while I definitely respected that quite a bit, and I do think human biology is very, very fascinating. I think climate impact comes [00:10:00] with a massive health impact as well. especially if you're targeting. Areas like seaports, for example, that are heavily polluted but also extremely marginalized in terms of their population. And so you kind of see a disproportionate, health equity kind of impact. And so it felt really round together and I think I've seen it quite a bit throughout my inclinations and the things that I like to research. So it felt very full circle, when it came time to, to really jump ship. though it was definitely not easy making decisions.

Erum Yeah, that is incredible. I mean, you know, ultimately at the core of everything has been biology, right? How do you leverage biology as a tool, but. There's this belief that biology isn't just a tool, it's a whole new industrial platform. I'm sure this resonates with you, and as someone who is engineering microbes to process waste gases, which I'm excited for you to talk more about. Do you feel that biology is starting to rewrite how heavy industry [00:11:00] works?

Sophia Absolutely. I think this biomanufacturing, this idea that. Biology should not be constrained to biopharma. which I know is what, grow everything, is, uh, is really focused on. I think that is a really good aspect. Um. I do believe that microbes, you know, my co-founder says this all the time, there's a bug for everything. microbes are able to produce a wide variety of things. Everything from your commodities, everyday fuels and chemicals to these higher margin, higher value products.

Sophia So I think what we're really going to see is not just the genetic engineering component of these microbes, but also the infrastructure, which is really where Carbon Bridge, falls into, So more of like an interdisciplinary approach to biology and really bringing the future of Biomanufacturing forward.

Karl Yeah, that really makes sense. I mean, we're gonna dive into the technology, but could you help our listeners visualize carbon [00:12:00] bridge. If someone stood next to one of your systems, what would they see happening? You know, gas in, gas out. what is it?

Sophia Yeah. So what you would see is this bioreactor. but our bioreactor doesn't really look like your typical fermentor that you would use to make wine or beer instead. It's almost this like. planer flat modular system. So think of it as right now the size of your average MacBook, and you would have these reactors stacked on top of each other, so maybe three MacBooks stacked on top. And then you've got inputs where you got gas flowing in. Occasionally you have liquid flowing in, and then on the output you get liquid coming out. And that can be your fuel, your chemical, whatever. Product of choice, but essentially you've got this magic box where the microbes are operating, doing their things that they've been doing in nature for, millennia, and they're making some really interesting things for us.

Erum Oh my gosh. I love that. I, I actually had an opportunity to see [00:13:00] your modular bioreactor MacBook like device, um, when I was at SynBioBeta. I dunno if it was last year, the year before, but, one of your co-founders, Manu.

Sophia Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably last year.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. So he was on stage and he brought it on stage and I was like, wait.

Erum That's a bioreactor. I mean, it's so like, that could be in my house. Like, you know, like it's something that could be like in the corner of my, you know, in my apartment and making things for me. And I was like, this is really unbelievable. But maybe, like thinking a little too, I don't know, maybe there's more to it than just those. But is that it? Is it just those MacBook device size devices?

Sophia Yeah. I mean that is the essential magic. Box, I would say there's a lot of things around it, right? Mm-hmm. So all the fluid controls there is an AI kind of software layer. so we can control what goes in and out and tune it to productivity, but that's essentially it. I mean, oh my gosh, it's one of our favorite party tricks, networking tricks to, you know, be like, we've gotta bioreactor and a backpack

Erum for us. Oh my God. [00:14:00]

Karl Just amazing.

Erum Amazing. Yeah. I love it. I love it. so you mentioned a little bit about how it works. You mentioned that there's different controls and in traditional chemical engineering controls everything. But biology is very unpredictable and unpredictability is like built into biology. So how do you navigate the tension that a scientist feels when they're designing with living systems to perform reliably at scale?

Sophia Yeah, I think there's multiple layers to that. I would a hundred percent agree, and we're actually working with a non-model organism, so not your typical e coli or yeast. And so there's a lot that we don't know about the microbes. And of course everything is living, so there's a lot of uncertainty. When we get this question though, we also always point to wine and beer and how we've kind of scaled and perfected that process over thousands of years. So we know biology can scale.

Sophia You do need the information around it, unlike some other biotech companies. Because we don't, and it's a whole research project to [00:15:00] know all the internal mechanisms of what's going on inside the microbe. We focus on everything around it, and so we kind of treat this microbe as this black box, but we wanna make sure we tune our inputs and our outputs very carefully so we can make sure that this entire system scales.

Sophia I will also add kind of from a chemical engineering perspective. your traditional fermentors are, massive vats, right? They're, they're really large tanks. And the way that we scale is we go from, you know, one liter to 10 liters to a hundred liters. But really what is key to scaling is how do you control the local microbial environment.

Sophia Like if you're a little microbe, it's like, what do you see? You see the pH, you see the temperature, you see the gases, right? Things like that. And going from that kind of 10 x scale in these increasingly larger tanks. It's really, really difficult to both model and control that local microbial environment.

Sophia But as you mentioned, Erum, our kind of MacBook little devices, [00:16:00] they're scalable simply by stacking, right? So we just have to control that tiny kind of internal cavity that each MacBook has and then simply stack because it's so modular. So scaling for us is a lot easier than traditional biotechnology, I would say.

Sophia No.

Karl And Sophia, is it proprietary what non-model organism you guys are using or can

Sophia you Oh, not at all. Um, we're using a methanotroph. these are little bacteria that like to eat methane and oxygen and can convert it into multiple different things but what we care about is methanol, which is kind of a C one alcohol building block to, multiple different processes, but also is, fuel for the maritime shipping industry.

Karl I wanna just follow up on that. You talked about stacking these MacBook like, bioreactors on top of each other. you know, you could probably use just one, but what's the biggest stack you guys have ever done?

Sophia That's a great question. Right now we've done about three stacks on top of each other. that [00:17:00] corresponds to about an 80 x increase in scale from what we started. So that probably took us maybe about three months. So we've been very successful in scaling because again, the productivities have really held up. but we're really excited to just stack more and more. But there's kind of an automated, we need to introduce some more automated valves. A lot of control systems now is really where we're at.

Karl Yeah, I mean one of the things about you guys is about Carbon Bridge is that you claim this massive performance increase while offering a green discount, and that's a pretty bold promise. Where did you realize sustainability and economics didn't have to be trade offs?

Sophia Yeah, I mean, again, kind of going back to the theme that everyone traditionally thinks that biology has to make some extremely high value, like pharmaceutical drugs or, know, other products like that. we wanted to target commodities because that has the greatest impact, initially, and so to do something with commodities, but also to make sure [00:18:00] that you can compete economically without subsidies or credits, means you have to have a very scrutinized focus on both your CapEx and your opex.

Sophia So. Traditionally renewable methods to make methanol, for example, the thermo catalytic methods, they utilize extremely high energy because they have extremely high temperatures and high pressures. I mean, we're talking about like a thousand degrees Celsius and basically. They take these renewable inputs, which cost money.

Sophia They have a very expensive process because everything from the steel that they use has to accommodate this extreme, you know, pressure and temperature. So that's extremely high CapEx. And then also the electricity they need to be able to run these processes at that energy. So they're never able to compete, and then we have to talk about subsidies, credits, charities, things like that.

Sophia For us, biology really was the game changer, right? Like these microbes, they've got enzymes that can do these things like methane [00:19:00] to methanol in a single step at 30 degrees Celsius and at ambient pressure. Right. Biology is happening around us at all times, which is really what's amazing, about these, bio catalytic systems.

Sophia And then on top of that, we're taking waste. So it's really about leveraging, truly leveraging the capability of the microbe, making sure we have an infrastructure that doesn't add complexity to that, and then being able to compete on that method.

Erum Yeah, amazing. I love the fact that you just said doesn't add complexity because there's been a lot of solutions that because we didn't have as much knowledge that are over-engineered, so to be able to like allow biology to do its thing in a semi controlled environment.

Erum Is like, it's where it's at. I mean, I love the way that you're, you're thinking, and I hope more companies think this way, because sometimes over engineering it costs more money, like you're saying with, you know, whether it's energy inputs or other types of feedstock, other types of controls that are necessary.

Sophia absolutely.

Erum [00:20:00] Yeah. Yeah. And so we're talking about, you know, going from lab scale to more industrial relevance. To talk about stacking three of those MacBook, we need to come up with the name of, is there a name for it? The higher record.

Sophia We call them notebooks essentially. 'cause they are, oh my

Erum god, love

Sophia it.

Sophia Actually sized like a four, a five type of thing.

Erum Okay. So stacking the notebooks, we're up to three. That's an 80X, um, improvement in performance. Can you, provide some like more numbers behind that? Like what does that look like in terms of. output relevant to like, traditional methods. I'm curious about that.

Erum And then, another part of this question is like, what has been the hardest part when you're, taking that leap, like scaling up? Is it scientific? Is it emotional? Is it operational to go from lab to a real infrastructure?

Sophia Yeah, so I will say we are obviously not at the full deployment of real infrastructure.

Sophia Are expecting to hit that, quite soon with some exciting developments, probably later this year and early next year. Um, but [00:21:00] in terms of improvement to your very first question, we are about 80% more energy efficient. And energy efficiency is calculated in many different ways. Especially for fuels, it can be like, what's the heating value that you put in and what's the, you know, heating value that you come out because you burn up fuels.

Sophia Right. it can also be what is your electricity input that you get in versus the energy that you get out. so depending on how you calculate it, we're probably around 80% more energy efficient than compared to traditional methods compared to. Biocon conversion methods and we're benchmarking everything right now on methane to methanol.

Karl Mm-hmm.

Sophia But I will note, you know, if you put a new microbe in our system that could perform very differently. but benchmarking on methane to methanol, our microbes are operating about 500% more productive than even genetically modified microbes.

Erum Wow.

Sophia Right now we're using fully wild type, and our whole thesis, like you were saying earlier, is that.

Sophia You know, nature has really [00:22:00] evolved these pathways. Like let's let biology do its thing. But before we were kind of limiting it with the existing infrastructure and now we've really unlocked and unleashed the potential of these microbes. So. There are some more technical challenges on its way, but what we have proven is the productivity of each microbe has increased significantly, and we don't think we've hit the limit on that yet.

Sophia We've proved that scaling is a lot easier because it's almost a linear scaling, like just add more surface area essentially. And then the next thing that we have to work on is some microbe density. Type of things. A little more technical, but, it's a very interesting kind of three box problem for us.

Erum Yeah, I just wanted to, add that like, you know, me imagining this, and I'm sure this is what other people are thinking with the notebooks, is like, just like a server farm, you know, just being able to have these notebooks stacked on top of each other, producing what you need, and then maybe it doesn't have to be that big, right?

Erum This is another way of thinking is like, all right, you have a server farm that's like, you know, located one [00:23:00] place and it's massive and it has to distribute versus. Perhaps, you know, we love talking about distributed manufacturing, have smaller bioreactor, um, locations to produce something specific. Or it

Erum could change depending on how people wanna use it locally. we had a guest on, Gabe Tavas of Symmetry Wood, and he talked about fab cities and how you're able to make things just locally that you need versus having to rely on, things shipped around the world, rely on, you know, volatile pricing.

Erum I mean. I'm feeling it in the grocery stores and like other locations that things are getting really expensive. I'm like, why are things like, how do we get this back under control? And it just seems like, you know, having things local, locally or regionally could help with that. So

Sophia yes, absolutely. I love that perspective.

Sophia because we, we also approached it from a similar idea, which is one, the feed stocks that are available are often a lot smaller. Like you would never build a refinery on like a hog farm, right? Right. It's just, you couldn't justify that a billion [00:24:00] dollar infrastructure investment. But for us it's like you stack more, you stack less.

Sophia And so now we really are talking about, local supply chains, distributed manufacturing, everything that you're saying is really resonant. And then I think the second thing that. Also you mentioned, which was really important for us, is this idea that you can switch products almost like a reconfigurability because you need that flexibility in terms of manufacturing and you wanna make sure you put your CapEx, you put your steel to work, right?

Sophia It's not like you've only got one plant that can only make one thing. And for us, it's. Well, you swap out your microbe, right? And then you can make different products and we're really working with researchers that are developing a bunch of different pathways, and they will get money for their pathway.

Sophia They can license their pathway out. We've got the servers, right, that these microbes operate on. And then. We can make a bunch of different products together.

Erum Wow.

Karl Wow. That's such a brilliant way to localize and customize, the Carbon Bridge [00:25:00] notebooks. Give us some examples of where these would be deployed. Like I could imagine, I've got. dairy Farm, producing a fair amount of methane. I'm pulling it away from the cows and I'm driving it into a server farm, if we're gonna call it that. But give us some examples of what deployment looks like.

Sophia Yeah, so essentially, any waste gases. So we operate in the gas fermentation space, so if you're doing anything with sugars, we're probably not your best bet. That being said, if it is an aerobic process, like it's oxygen limited, we can also play there. in terms of actual. Places you would think like a hog farm, dairy farms, wastewater treatment facilities.

Sophia They're generating a ton of biogas. even breweries. They have a a hundred percent CO2 that's coming out. in agriculture wineries. They're also generating a ton of CO2, but that's seasonal. so you have a fluctuation and Availability of feedstock and then of course landfills. So just typical waste sources.

Sophia we are very much looking [00:26:00] into partnering for degradation of lignocellulose waste, so like solid biomass and then generating gases from that and then running it into a reactor. So there's kind of different Lego blocks that we can play with. That's really interesting.

Karl And you guys have been supported by ARPA e, indie Bio and SOSV,

Karl You've seen both public and private climate funding up close. What do you think funders still misunderstand about scaling climate biotech?

Sophia I think that there's a lot of misconceptions. I would say the biggest concern and probably still an accurate concern is, risk.

Sophia And I think just the way that the geopolitical economic, Perspectives are developing, people are willing to take less bets and less risk. And you know, there's obviously more attractive technologies that will provide a faster return, for venture capitalists as well as, you know, I [00:27:00] would say the government is maybe a less, susceptible to this, but we're seeing, we're seeing changes in that area too.

Sophia So I wish that. You know, people would take more bets. We're only here because SOSV took an early bet on us, because ARPE, our program director was, thinking that we were literally crazy. He told us we were crazy, but they're like, if they can make this work, this is game changing. And so I do think we're gonna have new models of capital investment.

Sophia I hope it comes quicker. because kind of the traditional methods, it does take longer a hundred percent than say, an AI company. But, the impact and the potential return can also be a lot larger too.

Erum Yeah. I love that you, pointed out the different funding models. It's something that we've been thinking and talking about throughout the podcast, but also our work at Messaging Lab because, we talk to a lot of biotech founders, and biotech isn't necessarily AI software, right?

Erum It's complete opposite almost. And so [00:28:00] maybe something more predictable, like creating software and seeing how it operates and you're able to test it and see how it works. It's easier to be venture backed versus, but. Biological solutions and what does that look like? What does alternative funding look like?

Erum So that kind of leads me to like, its intermediary question about it or a follow up question is, you're making methanol or you're making, different, fuels for thethe shipping industry. Right.

Sophia Great question. We actually sell bioreactors, but we sell the react, but we proving out our bioreactor through the methane to methanol process.

Erum Okay. So you're selling bioreactors then. Like who have you like soft circled, who could be potential buyers of bioreactors and I'm asking that because we always think of like in the end, When you're selling something to a customer, that's the end. Value. to the customer remains and there's an exchange of.

Erum they give you money, you're giving them a solution. So, we think of them, they could be like strategic investors or maybe, you know, they, they buy the bioreactors, on a, like a wait list. And then after you develop it more, they can get it. So can you share, like [00:29:00] who would be a potential buyer of the bioreactors?

Sophia Yeah, so we've actually sold, two bioreactors already. Nice. these are the RR and D scale, but they were to a national lab and another kind of government research entity. the first one is helping us develop, a process in aerobic process to go from, waste to agricultural. To bio surfactants, which are kind of ingredients in hair care, but also lubricants, antibiotics, even pesticides.

Sophia And then the second one is using our reactor to basically screen a bunch of microbes, and see which ones are performant so that way they can go from CO2 and hydrogen to X, Y, Z product. So again, it's very much a platform play. Love working with researchers because the way that we see it is that if they develop a pathway on our bioreactor platform, they're kind of locked into our system and then we grow together.

Sophia And it's almost like, this is kind of a really unique way of thinking it, but [00:30:00] of like a, an app store essentially, or a pet store.

Erum Yeah, I was

Sophia thinking about that. Where. Right where researchers can license out their pathway that they've developed. 'cause they love working with their microbes and they've worked with it for five, 10 plus years.

Sophia They put it into our, you know, our online website, whatever it is. And then some customer will come to us and they're like, we want to make this product. And we say perfect. And we, We've got the bug that the research provided. We've got our reactor and we, we come together. So it's almost like A-A-G-P-U kind of NVIDIA system for biotech that we're really interested in.

Sophia But yeah, that's, that's what we're doing in terms of selling. but those are kind of the reactor kind of r and d scale. And of course on the larger scale, we do have an LOI with Norwegian cruise lines, and they want a ton of renewable methanol. But again, we don't sell the end product, so we have to find a project developer who would buy our reactors, sell the methanol, things like that. So you have a wide variety of customers, but [00:31:00] essentially we've got three scales of reactors. We've got an RD scale, we've got like a pilot scale, and then we've got, you know, a commercial 40 foot container footprint kind of scale.

Karl Yeah, amazing. I could see some really interesting and innovative business models, developing based on all of what you just said. It's not just the microbes or the notebooks There's other business models that can be built around that. Yeah. So that's super exciting.

Sophia Absolutely. Thank you.

Karl when it comes to, climate, a lot of solutions focus on carbon removal and you guys are focusing on conversion, converting waste gases into something valuable, something useful. How do you think about performance impact and urgency when designing systems for a warming planet?

Sophia Yeah, so. Carbon removal is great and there's a place for that. But for us, maximum impact is not only taking waste carbon but replacing it, replacing fossil molecules or displacing fossil [00:32:00] molecules by making, a renewable product.

Sophia we don't think that we'll be able to make everything, although we're working with more and more researchers and I'm sure they're gonna develop some really. Interesting microbial pathways. But if you can even just target 10 building block molecules that feed into multiple different processes, that is a massive, massive impact.

Sophia And so we started with methanol C one alcohol, right? You can do some C two products, maybe even c threes. but things that. You know, it's almost like a bowling pin. You hit one thing and you've, you've, you've hit a bunch of other things, right? So that's the way that we're looking at it. I do think that there's an urgent need to replace these kind of key molecules as quickly as we can.

Sophia I know there's also an urgent push to electrify everything, but I don't think that that is physically possible. for some, especially for something like heavy transportation. So. it is a rush to move forward. I think we are making progress, but again, more [00:33:00] capital, more partners, more support is always helpful.

Erum Yeah, I love that. 'cause this idea of like conversion, right? You think of like the the circular economy, right? And you talked about how a waste of fermentation process is CO2 and you could take that CO2 and make it into something else. Like there's no waste, which is how earth and life and what this planet works. There really is technically no waste. Waste is a manmade thing. Everything's used and I just love that. we talk about fermentation a lot here. I mean, obviously you're doing gas fermentation, but there's still another level that can be used to make value. Like there is really like no end. So, it's just this beautiful narrative about continuing to convert something and, you know, rebuilding products molecular level, which we love talking about too.

Sophia Exactly. And we're just here to speed that process up and, you know, take a cut away from the microbes. The microbes are already making it for themselves, but we're like, that's a useful fuel for us. Let's take a cut. [00:34:00] You know? Yeah.

Erum Let's

Sophia take a cut.

Erum So, yeah,

Sophia it is like we very much believe to work with nature, leverage nature.

Erum Absolutely. Absolutely. So let's do a little bit of visioneering. Okay. So. looking at decade ahead, what do you hope platforms like Carbon Bridge, what what do you envision that they do for us in everyday life? What, you know, you're talking about fuels, materials, chemicals. What do you think beyond that, that it could help us with?

Sophia Yeah, so I personally also think that we are on the cusp of kind of this biotechnology revolution, right? It's been said also for a while, but we want to make sure that we increase reproducibility of biology. So this idea of a. App store, pet store. It's like you've got this system that's locked in, right? And then technically another researcher could say, Hey, I want to start working on this microbe and modify it. And they can get the full kind of software, they can get the microbes. There's a material transfer agreement [00:35:00] and they get it into the lab and hopefully we can continuously build on each other's work. And so we're trying to hope that, you know, this will increase the amount of research in this type of field. Like let's really discover everything that these microbes can do. Not just e coli, not just yeast, not just your, you know, microalgae farms. there's a whole range of different things. Let's incentivize researchers because they can now license their microbial pathways and they can have, you know, some revenue shares and let's just really boost up this industry as a whole. 'cause I think there's a lot to be reaped from it, and I'm sure. You know, grow everything also agrees with that.

Karl Definitely. I mean, that is what we talk about, on almost every episode. so we're gonna move into the quick fire section of this, interview. Erum and I will alternate, questions and, hopefullywe'll try to get you to answer briefly. and, what we've found is that this is a very fun part of these interviews. So, Sophia, what's harder to explain at a dinner party? Climate [00:36:00] biotech or AI

Sophia climate Biotech, a hundred percent. I think it does require, I think AI has also infiltrated our systems quite a bit, so people kind of know what's going on.

Karl Yeah,

Erum yeah, absolutely. Okay, so one climate myth you wish would disappear forever.

Sophia I think I talked about this a little bit earlier, but, electrifying everything. there's a push but if you just kind of look at the world and the infrastructure that we have, it's not built for electrical, everything. So we need alternative solutions.

Karl What's the biggest misconception people have about gas fermentation?

Sophia That you need to use bubbles. I mean, this whole idea that everything has to be, microbes have to be cultured in liquids and all that. Microbes love gases. You know, unless they were isolated in the deep pits of an ocean, like they likely have some access to gas and soil and rivers, whatever it is.

Sophia So, there are new ways to cultivate microbes. You don't have to have everything in a massive liquid tank.

Erum [00:37:00] Amazing. Okay. All right. So one climate solution you're deeply skeptical of.

Sophia Hydrogen. I would say that there is, there is a use case for hydrogen, but if there's any storage or transportation of it, eliminate. Delete.

Karl Okay.

Erum Awesome.

Karl All right. Finish the sentence. The future of industry will be built by.

Sophia Those who are willing to actually build it and in particular interdisciplinary teams.

Karl Amazing.

Erum Woo. Awesome. Oh my gosh. So well said. I really enjoyed this episode with you. I mean, I knew of Carbon Bridge, of course. I've gotta give a shout out to Ellen Jorgensen, who's been on the podcast, of course, a couple times. Big friends, fans of hers. and so, and she's a part of your team, so I wanted to give a shout out to her. And we've learned about Carbon Bridge and then how it's been progressing over the years, and we cannot wait as things scale up, we'll have to have you back on. Ellen, Manu, maybe the whole team. Have a [00:38:00] chit chat, maybe go behind the scenes. There's a lot that we want to continue learning about Carbon Bridge.

Sophia No, thank you so much. Really appreciate everything that you guys are doing at Grow Everything. I think it's a really important mission. also going to shout out my team in particular, my co-founder Manu. He, he is a real genius. so it'd be great to have him on the podcast too at some point.

Karl Awesome.

Karl Well, thank you so much for your, for coming on, grow Everything, Sophia. Look forward to talking to you soon.

Sophia Yes, thank you. Thank you guys again. All right. Yay.

Karl Erum, what was your take on that interview with Sophia?

Erum Oh my goodness, Carl, like when you and I finished interviewing Sophia, we were like blown away. We had so many ideas like, oh, well, we could put those notebooks over here and we can connect it to this fermentation tank and do, do, do, do, do. It was so inspiring and refreshing to see a different type of design when it comes to bioreactors and how they can be used first modularly taking up less space and to be used for different types of products to be made. I just, I wanna talk to Sophia and her team, Manu, obviously Ellen of course, and be like, what can we do? Let's do something like it's, Products like Carbon Bridge is making like their notebooks that they're making that enable more people to use gas fermentation to make things. So I'm just very excited. What about you? What did you take [00:40:00] away from that interview?

Karl I was spinning in our conversation afterwards. I was spinning business models. I love that Sophia said, you know, there's a bug for everything. Our listeners should go back and listen to our interview with Neely Ostroff of Cultivarium. Because Cultivarium was focused, is focused on making non-model organisms accessible. And I think what Sophia is doing, you know, having an app store where scientists could post, their microbes and make them available so they could be put into these notebooks, is an incredible opportunity and a different kind of business models. So for me, I kept thinking, what's the business model or what are the multiple business models that Carbon Bridge can create, not just based on, you know, selling or renting the notebooks, but what does that enable?

Karl And then, you know, as I mentioned in the intro, we have had a number of other companies come on, talk about gas fermentation. How do they work together? How do they compliment each other? I think there's a lot of synergy there and I think it's very exciting.

Erum Yeah, I could just imagine like just, they're [00:41:00] calling them notebooks. We all have notebooks. We all have our MacBook or I don't know what other computers are out there.

Karl Yeah, Thinkpads.

Erum Your own think oh pads.

Karl You know,

Erum I love, think

Karl my ThinkPad,

Erum I've only used MacBooks, um, for the past, I don't know, 15 years or so. But anyway, but just everyone could have this. So they're selling bioreactors. They're Sophia was talking about Norwegian cruise lines, being able to buy, these, notebooks.

Erum what I really liked Sophia talking about was the app store. So you were just mentioning, you know, different non-model organisms or different microbes being able to solve different problems that there's a microbe for everything. So, you know, there's an app for that, right. Similarly, there you go. There's a microbe for that. And to be able to use a carbon source, which is, you know, life is carbon and oxygen and hydrogen. So to be able to use these waste gases with some other elements and minerals, perhaps you can make stuff. You can make things.

Erum And I would love to [00:42:00] see this in action. This is another one of those interviews where I was like, oh man, I wish we could have taken our cameras and go to the lab and see what they're making and be able to help people visualize how this works. Yeah. because there's, again, we were saying this on top of the episode, there's nothing better than a demo for people to see what's actually going on.

Erum I mean, we have a podcast, our whole purpose is to talk. Yeah. But now we need a video. We can show things and I think this is one of those great things to be able to show you have these notebooks that are stacked and being able to produce any type of product out of it is, it's very sci-fi becoming sci fact.

Karl Well, and the great thing for us is that Sophia's local, she's basically a train ride away and we should just go over there and, do some filming. Well, that's what our phones are for. we need to do this more often or we need to start doing this so that our audience can see some of these companies that we're interviewing and what they're enable.

Erum Yeah. Yeah. And just to give our listeners a [00:43:00] reminder and a summary of how these bioreactors can work, what Sophia talked about was having these notebooks she said that they could be at dairy farms or hog farms to, get methane capture. So you have that feed stock to be able to make what you want. Uh, wastewater treatment facilities, breweries because they have a hundred percent CO2 output. So any type of brewery. And we're thinking like there's a lot of craft breweries here in Brooklyn alone. So what can that make locally for us? Right. of course, I, you know, chocolate breweries, wineries also have seasonal CO2, waste.

Erum So how do you. Capture that and to make things that compliment those industries, like what could be made for wineries. I mean, I don't know if there's certain types of preservatives or I don't know if they can make some type of paper for the label or the, wax on the top of the bottle. Like, I dunno.

Erum I mean, my mind's going wild here. and then of course you talk about landfills. I had to take some [00:44:00] gases from there to be able to produce anything. And that's really like, okay, if you're talking about landfills. Being a feed stock for making things, that's when you start achieving true circularity. And then we start eliminating this concept of waste and everything's being used for that whole abundance mentality to make whatever we need for everybody.

Karl I love that. I love what, Carbon Bridge is doing and I agree. I think we need to have, Sophia and Manu on here, again soon just to hear how they're evolving, particularly how their, business model is evolving. I'm super excited for them and I'm super glad we did that interview.

Erum Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. So. That's a wrap I wanna thank you so much for listening to the Grow Everything Podcast could find us on all streaming channels. Of course, you found us on this streaming channel because you're listening to us right now, but there are others, so feel free to listen on other platforms. And guess what? We are very engaged with our audience. [00:45:00] Text us. Email us, call us. All the information's in the show notes. We would love to hear from you. And of course, if you're viewing this on YouTube, hello, subscribe. Like we love engaging with our listeners. So thank you so much for listening to the Grow Everything podcast.

Karl That's the po.