Venture capital deployed · 2026 YTD
Sector market cap
Largest raise · trailing 12mo
Catalysts ahead · next 12mo
Companies tracked
Nothing on the calendar yet.
Nothing on the calendar yet.
Mega-rounds have returned to the sector: Isomorphic's $2.1B Series B (May 2026), Cellares' $327M Series D (June 2026), and Generate's $400M IPO (February 2026). Seed and Series A checks stayed small, mostly $10M to $70M, while 2021's $100M to $500M rounds have not recurred at the early end.
Late-stage capital dominates the last 12 months by dollar volume. Series B and later rounds and public offerings account for most of the roughly $3B raised since June 2025, while Series A and seed deals cluster at $18M to $70M. Early-stage activity is steady in count but thin in dollars.
Thrive Capital led Isomorphic's $2.1B round and co-backed Chai's 2024 seed. General Catalyst and Oak HC/FT led Chai's $130M Series B at a $1.3B valuation. ARK Invest, BlackRock, and Prime Radiant led Cellares' 2026 Series D. Newer names such as Altimeter, Viking Global, and Cerberus appeared on recent deals. ARCH Venture Partners and Flagship Pioneering, which led large rounds in 2022 to 2024, have not led a disclosed round since 2025.
Ginkgo's lab-access and imaging deals are less about selling autonomous labs than about who owns the experimental data those labs generate.
Ginkgo's lab-access deals are turning a stock-price story into a test of whether autonomous labs can be rented like cloud compute
Synbio's rebound is a toll-road bet on DNA synthesis, not a vindication of platforms
Synbio's next moat is provenance, not prediction — trust is the scarce asset
As of 2026-08-01
Synthego grew rapidly as a CRISPR reagent and services supplier but its heavy investment in automation, technology and operations consistently outpaced revenue, creating mounting liquidity pressure. On May 5, 2025 the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, with a plan to sell substantially all of its assets to its lead creditor. Funds managed by Perceptive Advisors provided debtor-in-possession financing and agreed to a credit-bid acquisition; Perceptive Credit Holdings exchanged as much as $85 million in debt for ownership. The acquisition closed on July 18, 2025, ending Synthego's existence as an independent company though the business continued under Perceptive's ownership.
Amyris pivoted from biofuels to fermentation-derived ingredients and then to owning a portfolio of clean-beauty brands, but the marketing and operating spend required to scale brands like Biossance, JVN Hair and Rose Inc consistently outran revenue and saddled the company with heavy debt. In February 2023 it sold its squalane and Hemisqualane ingredient portfolio to Givaudan to raise cash. On August 9, 2023 Amyris and several subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in Delaware, with additional debtors added on August 21, 2023, and announced it would exit and sell its consumer brands. Through the proceeding the beauty brands and other assets were divested to new owners, ending Amyris as an independent operating company.
After a $500 million April 2021 IPO at roughly a $3 billion valuation, Zymergen disclosed in August 2021 that its flagship bio-electronics film Hyaline had failed to win customers and that 2021 product revenue would be negligible, sending the stock down more than 70% and prompting the resignation of CEO Josh Hoffman. With no viable hero product and mounting losses, Zymergen agreed in July 2022 to an all-stock acquisition by Ginkgo Bioworks valued at about $300 million. Ginkgo absorbed Zymergen's people and platform; the standalone Zymergen entity subsequently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October 2023 and announced liquidation in early 2024, ending the brand.