Anthrogen: low-cost polymer manufacturing + CDR
From plastics to fuels to foods to fabrics, every facet of our lives is defined by polymers. Yet, with fluctuating oil prices, inefficient catalytic processes, and mounting pressure around carbon emissions, the trillion-dollar polymer industry is in a precarious position.
We need a way to produce polymers cheaper and more sustainably.
Anthrogen has engineered the fastest known photosynthesizing organism to ever exist. Their platform consists of a next-generation protein foundry and enzymatic cascade technology. They engineer bacteria with CRISPR and cascade their outputs for cheap, scalable, and climate-friendly feedstock manufacturing.
Fresh off the heels of their $4M seed funding announcement in Axios, we sat down with Ankit, Vignesh and Connor to talk about their AI-powered process of turning CO2 into chemicals.
What have been the historic difficulties associated with producing materials traditionally derived from oil through more renewable resources?
The primary issue has been cost. People and companies simply do not want to pay a “green premium.” For non-petroleum-derived chemicals to be adopted, they must be cheaper, faster, and better.
We can produce a lot of chemicals in-vivo (fermentation) or a-cellularly, but these approaches struggle to get enough throughput/yield on reactions to make them commercially viable. Protein (of which enzymes are a subset) engineering has historically been incredibly expensive. If we can make the catalysts much better, we can increase the yield of our reactions, driving down the cost.
Our approach uses generative AI models to iterate on biocatalysts much faster, improving yield and reducing costs. While the idea of improving catalysts isn’t new, our AI tools outperform anything we’ve seen. We believe this is among the most impactful applications of AI today.
What are the challenges and opportunities associated with using CO2 as a feedstock?
There are two primary issues—”distance” and concentration.
Regarding distance, CO2 is a small molecule that is completely oxidized and very “far” (e.g. many reaction steps/enzymes away) from useful molecules. It’s why historically, “closer” molecules like glucose have been used as a feedstock for many of these reactions. CO2 is also a very stable molecule; it takes a lot of energy to turn it into something useful.
This point is also linked to the point of concentration—CO2 in the air is 400ppm, which is very high as we think about the livability of this planet, but low in terms of the concentration needed for high flux through a reaction pathway.
To solve this, we use enzymes to capture CO2 from air and concentrate it in our reaction solution. These enzymes, designed de novo, also shorten the reaction pathway to valuable products.
What got you and the team so excited to work on this problem space and what have been the biggest learnings to date?
All three of us are 20 year olds, and climate change is one of those issues that remains at the forefront. Plastics, fuels, and chemicals contribute ~20% of human emissions, with no easy path to decarbonize. Questions of equitability for countries that have not fully industrialized yet also tend to be raised. If we can produce these same materials cheaper and carbon-negative, the impact would be immense.
Our biggest takeaway? Always stay focused on costs. Lack of cost-competitiveness has doomed most green startups. Every experiment and decision we make ties back to unit economics and beating petroleum-based competitors.