Climate Capital Bio

Backing founders building bio-tech climate solutions that accelerate the decarbonization of the largest and least sustainable sectors of the economy.

Led by Michael Luciani and Jenny Kan

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Sustainable cement, next generation plastics, alternative protein sources, textiles made from manufactured spider silk, mushroom leather – these are just a fraction of the promise of biotechnology. The bioeconomy has created new opportunities to support a more sustainable future and address the existential threats posed by climate change. We’re working to maximize the benefits of the bioeconomy, which has the potential to revitalize U.S. manufacturing, create more resilient supply chains and new jobs, address economic inequity, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

“Bio today is where information technology was 50 years ago: on the precipice of touching all of our lives. Just like software—and because of it—biology will one day become part of every industry.” - A16Z Biology is Eating the World: A Manifesto
“60% of the physical inputs to the global economy can be produced biologically” - McKinsey The Bio Revolution
“By the end of the decade, synbio could be used extensively in manufacturing industries that account for more than a third of global output—a shade under $30 trillion in terms of value” - BCG: Synthetic Biology is About to Disrupt your Industry

Founding partner of Climate Capital Bio and of the Climate Capital Syndicate. Michael is also a founding member of Terra Do’s Climate for Venture Investors program and mentors hard science climate-tech startups via the Maryland Energy Innovation Accelerator and biotech startups via Indie Bio.
Previously the founder and CEO of The Tuesday Company, which was acquired by Helm (led by Emma Bloomberg). Tuesday pioneered the field of ‘relational organizing,’ creating two consumer-facing products with over 1M users. Prior to Tuesday, Michael worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and in the Obama White House.
After the acquisition of The Tuesday Company, Michael was able to combine his experience as a founder with his passions for frontier tech and climate to help early stage founders succeed.
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Founding partner of Climate Capital Bio and technical due diligence lead. Jenny holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge in Chemistry. She was the lead protein engineer in the lab of Frances H. Arnold (2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) at CalTech and worked with startups and Fortune 500 companies such as Dow Chemicals, L’Oreal, and Merck to use biology to solve problems and launch products. Jenny is the inventor of 7 patents, author of 24 peer-reviewed research articles, and invited speaker at Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT. Her synthetic biology research was previously featured in Forbes, The New York Times, and the Nobel Prize lecture.
Prior to Climate Capital Bio, Jenny co-founded Simpl.Care, a venture-backed health tech startup, and worked at 17 Asset Management where she designed financial products and built ecosystems for underrepresented entrepreneurs. She mentors biotech startups at Nucleate, iGEM EPIC, and Indie Bio.
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Climate Capital Bio Fund Portfolio

Aralez Bio (Biocatalysis for Amino Acids)

Wild Microbes (Making bio-production more scalable)
Pomodyne (Growing fruit without plants)
BioDrive (Enabling the targeted expression of specific traits in specific organisms)
CacheDNA (Room temperature DNA & RNA data storage)
Prism Bio (Decarbonizing and detoxifying the dying process)

GP’s Prior Investments

Food & Ag

Atomo Coffee (Coffee without the beans)
Black Sheep Foods (Making plant-based meat tasty)
California Cultured (Chocolate without deforestation)
Circe Bioscience (Decarbonizing food production)
Compound Foods (Sustainable lab grown coffee)
Concert Bio (Improve indoor farming with healthy microbes)
Hoxton Farms (Plant-based animal fat)
Prose Foods (Predicting proteins with specific functionalities)
Zero Acre Farms (Sustainable alternative to destructive vegetable oils)
Pomodyne (Fruit without trees)

Chemicals

Aralez Bio (Biocatalysis for Amino Acids)
Copernic Catalysts (Novel catalysts for chemicals and fuel production)
MicroByre (Replace petrochemical feedstocks with biomass)

Minerals & Metals

Impossible Metals (Battery metal nodules from the ocean floor without harming ecosystems + bio-extraction of metals)
Maverick BioMetals(Lithium bioextraction technology

Platforms & Infrastructure

Cache DNA (DNA data storage)
Cemvita Factory (‘Microbes-as-a-Service’ platform)
Colossal Biosciences (The world's first de-extinction company)
Living Carbon (Engineering plants to capture and store more carbon)
Pow.bio (High throughput fermentation platform)
Tiamat Sciences (Plants as bioreactors for manufacturing growth factors & biotech reagents)
Trilobio (Automation and app store for synbio)
Unicorn Biotechnologies (Scaling bio-manufacturing)
Wild Microbes (‘Microbes as a service’ platform)