Life is programmed not just by the three classes of biopolymers we often hear about: polynucleotides (DNA/RNA), polypeptides (proteins). A fourth class of biopolymers – polysaccharides (glycans) – plays an essential role in programming life. We’ve learned to “write” genes and proteins like software, but glycosylation is still a finicky, expensive manufacturing problem without programmability built into tech stacks. And this limitation has big implications: the wrong glycan can slash an antibody’s efficacy, trigger allergic reactions, or turn a multi-million-dollar batch into scrap. And it’s everywhere — 50%+ of newly approved drugs are glycosylated.

Augment Biologics has built a first-of-its-kind AI foundation model for glycoprogramming: predicting a handful of non-obvious amino-acid edits (e.g., ~4 changes in a 1,500-aa protein) that reliably encode precise, valuable glycosylation in the product itself — reducing reliance on fragile bioreactor control. This unlocks a >$200B U.S. monoclonal antibody market, protecting franchises like Merck’s Keytruda and refreshing aging blockbusters.

Glycoprogramming works. In a first set of 10 tested sequences, completely novel Fc variants, we set out to improve the presence of a functional critical glycan from 2-4% Standard-of-Care to 10%. 50% of our constructs blew past the biomanufacturing state of the art and left the current Standard-of-Care in the dust, increasing functional-critical glycosylation from 0% to 80% in an off-the-shelf cell line!

Already, Augment is in talks with 5 top pharmaceutical companies and has signed a partnership agreement with a leading CDMO. We are incredibly excited about this company – not only for the fundamental problems it can solve for the biomanufacturing and biotherapeutics markets — but also for the broad business opportunity that Augment faces. This is a platform company with enormous leverage.

GLP-1s are rapidly on track to reach $100B of sales in the US by 2030, becoming a cornerstone of treatment for obesity and metabolic dysfunction. Yet, what most don’t know is that over half of GLP users cycle off the drug within one year! This might be due to cost, intolerable side effects, or simply that it doesn’t work for a particular person. As a result there is immense need for new tools to manage side effects, while helping patients maintain weight loss after coming off their GLP-1 drug.

Enter Metabolize. Based on discoveries from the lab of Dr. Jonathan Long, Stanford professor with decades of research into molecular mechanisms of energy homeostasis, Metabolize is bringing two supplements to market this summer for patients rolling off GLP-1s. Both products will be both sold as pills to consumers and can be included as an ingredient in nutritional foods. First, they have a molecule to prevent the loss of muscle mass that happens to over 60% of GLP users. Second, their hero product has been shown to induce significant weight loss in proof of concept animal models via a completely different mechanism than GLPs, with no observed safety and tolerability issues. Led by a very experienced physician entrepreneur, we think this might well be the consumer product that breaks through the noise of GLP-1 alternatives with a novel, science-backed mechanism plus the sweet safety of a supplement.

Led by Bryan Ngo, PhD., (Altos Labs, Weill Cornell Medicine, Memorial Sloan Kettering), Post Translational Medicines (PTM) has half their round in the bank already. With an all-star team and an Advisor group with Nobel Prize winners, PTM is focused on a key feature of neurodegeneration, the accumulation and aggregation of waste proteins – the first of many hallmarks of aging that the company will pursue.

PTM’s first target is the enzyme that controls the pH of lysosomes. In aging cells, the enzyme takes a different shape, and the pH is not maintained. Cellular waste stops being secreted and cellular function falters. PTM’s cutting edge proteomics platform uncovered where to bind this target, how to bind this target – and how to make the aged enzyme isoform to reshape itself into a fully functional pillar of cellular health. PTM’s drug development efforts have them already at a very efficacious tool compound that binds very well to the aged isoform and repairs lysosomal function, while completely leaving alone the healthy isoform and healthy cells. With this round, they will advance the program to lead stage and deliver a biological data package covering both fundamental aging biology and cutting-edge disease models.

Post Translational Medicines’ unique biological data has seen strong inbound interest from pharma for their drug discovery value, from cosmetics companies for their anti-aging product lines, and from leading AI foundation labs – because Post-Translational Medicines’ new source of in-cell protein data could be the foundation of a whole new generation of alphafold models.

HyIvy is a medtech company that has already submitted for regulatory clearance, and has over 300 hospitals, GYNs, and PT clinics on their waitlist. 150 patients have benefitted from the therapy to-date, and this round will get HyIvy into hundreds more at clinics across the San Francisco area

Every gynecologist will tell you that multiple times a day they see patients whose previous condition has left them with chronic pelvic floor disorder and pain. These women may be cancer survivors, suffering through endometriosis, have unexplained vaginismus, recovering from childbirth, or managing menopause. Most of these patients aren’t even treated, instead put through a battery of tests or go on long waitlists for pelvic floor PT.

Built out of the CEO’s own experience, the Floora device empowers patients to rehabilitate from pelvic pain at home. It simultaneously collects novel biomarker data to show objective efficacy, and allows clinicians to monitor and tweak treatment remotely. It’s reimbursed under established Remote Therapeutic Monitoring codes, providing continuous revenue to both clinics and HyIvy.

Most cancer drugs chase tumors after they appear. Inixi Bio is daring to build the opposite: a once-monthly preventive designed to interrupt tumor initiation, the moment cancer begins, so patients never have to play catch-up. Prevention has already transformed other killers (think vaccines and the “statin moment” in heart disease). We believe oncology is next.

Founder Jon Spalding turned down a faculty position at Washington University at St. Louis to pursue his life’s work at Inixi Bio – to build the first cancer prevention drug. His groundbreaking insight into an oddity of genetics – a rare population of humans who never get cancer – led to a discovery of a key, conserved target that can shut down cancer right at its inception.

Cancer is responsible for 30% of deaths. Could changing that number make this actually a longevity drug? Maybe. Inixi is taking a smart clinical path. Within the next 3 years, Inixi will start trials where the need and the signal are unambiguous, an inherited cancer syndrome with near-certain early malignancy by age 30. These patients face aggressive surveillance, disfiguring surgeries, or worse by young adulthood. Swift trials with small numbers of patients provide a clear path to accelerated approval for their lead drug candidate, after which they can set their sights on proving the long but lucrative premise of stopping cancer before it happens – population wide.

Inixi is shifting cancer from late rescue to early prevention, measurably reducing procedures, surgeries, and fear. If we’re right, this isn’t just another oncology drug; it’s a new category: proactive cancer risk reduction at population scale.

IndieBio has not seen a foodtech company take off this fast since we funded NotCo in 2017.

FloUV makes UV-C sterilization systems that are 4x cheaper and draw 10x less electricity than existing systems. These are used throughout the liquids and beverages sector – both in supply chains and in processing/packaging – across dairy, juices, coffee, syrups, water and water treatment, and even packaged pharmaceuticals and supplements.

You might take food safety for granted, but the world’s processors do not. FloUV’s system uses precision dosing and advanced fluid dynamics for highly targeted performance customized for every customer. We funded this company in July 2025, and by the end of September, we had already shipped and tested pilot units that process 800 liters per hour. This has resulted in orders for units 20x to 30x larger, and we are currently negotiating over $5M in sales – all of which we intend to realize in 2026.

This company is riding the trend for gentler processing that doesn’t degrade bioactive proteins, potent flavor compounds, and critical nutrients. Yes, you can taste the difference! As consumers demand the quality of fresh food, but at the affordability and scale of processed food, FloUV is rapidly finding applications everywhere.

In the $600 Billion commodity animal feed market, farmers are being squeezed from all angles. As feed prices continue to rise, they are desperate for solutions to lower their input costs while still maintaining animal health and performance. Gilly takes large volume agricultural byproducts which are already being used in feed at low inclusion rates, and processes them to have higher protein and better digestibility with minimal added opex. In just a 3 day cycle they can boost protein content in the feedstock by at least 40% Essentially, Gilly can turn varied agricultural byproducts into feed with the same nutritional quality as a bulk feed like soybean meal.

In our lab, Gilly has proven they can upcycle soybean hulls, tomato pomace, distillers grain, corn silage, almond hulls, and more. Gilly will deploy their technology in a distributed manner on large farms and colocate with feedstock suppliers, optimizing for minimal transportation costs.

A massive industry also necessitates massive scale. Gilly’s first market is feeding the 1.7M dairy cows in California. Already at ton scale, Gilly is initiating a feed trial in 400 cows with a Modesto dairy, where they will evaluate the impacts of their feed on palatability and milk production. They’ll be treating a fraction of the 9 tons of dry feed these animals eat per day. Success with just this one customer will unlock a 7 figure revenue opportunity. Cofounders Bo and Vince have deep expertise in both operating commercial scale farming operations and scaling biomanufacturing processes for large volume markets

Greenhouses and polytunnels are eating the world of agriculture. Globally, 20 billion meter sq are now covered, and every year, 1M square meters of greenhouse capacity is added to farmlands, as controlled agriculture becomes the norm.

Most of these films and coatings block UV rays from sunlight, to both protect the film and the plants inside. Lambda Agri does something unique.

Rather than just blocking the energetic UV spectrum, their chemical compound downshifts this wavelength to beneficial red light in the photosynthetically active range. The red glow enhances plant signalling mechanisms, speeding up biomass growth, fruiting, and metabolite production – delivering the highest quality produce without any electricity or light system.

Lambda has already had multiple polytunnel film manufacturers and coatings companies coformulate their polymers with Lambda chemistry. Lambda outperforms and undercuts existing dye-based technologies on costs, positioning them for rapid adoption. They have sold out capacity for field trials with a single large strawberry grower in the UK, and have already brought in over $1M from investors.

Next time you drive past a field and see greenhouses, look for the red glow.

As the physical world becomes smarter with AI inference onboard, it means every electronic device, every sensor, and every robot will run algorithms at the edge. In turn, this means greater demand at the edge for juice, for power.

CPTI meets this demand by turning every surface, of any shape or flexibility needed, into a light-harvesting, self-charging power source. Already a commercial stage company with several industrial customers, CPTI quickly has reached the world’s best power density and world best surface thinness, enabled by the inclusion of world record performance perovskites. This enables a very inexpensive nanomaterial manufacturing process that resembles inkjet printing, facilitating a 90% margin. And they’ve set up a manufacturing supply chain which is ready to scale fast. Starting in devices and electronics, CPTI power systems will be growing over time into robotics, mobility, buildings, residential solar and utility solar.

CPTI is led by second-time founder / materials scientist Vivian Qu, who had a successful early exit of her first company.

CPTI’s self-charging surface skins work in any amount of light, indoor or out, at any angle, generating power where it’s needed. Biometric watches will never need charging. TV remotes will never need their battery replaced. Field tablets will put in more hours. Cameras and sensors won’t need an electricity source.

With water scarcity accelerating across the globe, massively reshaping agricultural and energy landscapes, reliable precipitation has become a critical infrastructure play with venture-backed companies, government programs, and utilities alike rushing to fund solutions. Surprisingly, the problem is not related to the lack of water in clouds. In fact, there is actually just as much water mass in a cumulus cloud as the mass of 100 African Elephants. The real issue is that the water in the clouds needs to freeze before rain or snow can fall. So what’s the real secret to reliable precipitation? Warm ice.

Led by two seasoned fungal biologists and the former Head of Meteorology at Rainmaker (with extensive cloud seeding operational experience), Supercool Earth is tackling the global water scarcity issue head on with their end to end cloud seeding technology featuring best in class ice nucleating proteins. Existing cloud seeding technologies, such as silver iodide, are only effective on a small fraction of clouds, largely limiting the scale of cloud seeding operations. By increasing the max operating temperature by a mere few degrees Celsius, SuperCool can open up 25-55% more seedable clouds. Further, Supercool’s hero product works both as a cloud seeding agent and snowmaking additive, which helps ski resorts make snow at warmer temperatures and expand the number of skiable days. They already have LOIs from two resorts for pilots this season.

Why is a nuclear engineer and a DARPA visionary teaming up with a hydrodynamic modeler to build … reefs? Because six beachfront resorts and $10 million of pilots in the pipeline are telling them that this is just a tiny fraction of the total $100 billion coastal defense market that nobody seems to have a solution for.

We didn’t fund this because reefs are cute–reefs are also one of the most resilient structures to reduce the wave energy coming on shore. In a world where 100-year storms are coming every few years, this is more urgent than ever. The customers aren’t just resorts and coastal residential communities, they’re governments, too. For example, Miami-Dade county alone spent over $340 million in the past decade on reversing the wave damage done to their beaches.

Our investment in ReefStarter was largely on their scalable, Lego-like solution, designed at the meters-scale, and detailed down to the millimeter-scale. They’ve already shown that they can reduce the wave energy, grow coral, and attract wildlife – incidentally, also very lucrative for the beachfront owners. The next round is to deliver their pilots and attract other customers who want to protect their beaches, too.