Hey HN! We are Connor, Vignesh, and Ankit, the team behind Anthrogen (YC S24) – www.anthrogen.com. Anthrogen genetically engineers bacteria and cascades output enzymes for carbon-negative polymer manufacturing.

From plastics to fuels to foods to fabrics to carbon stores – every facet of our lives is defined by polymers. Publicly traded companies live and die by the prices of these carbon chains and with the price of crude oil, inefficient catalytic processes, looming threats of legislation/public pressure around carbon emissions, these companies worth trillions of dollars are in a precarious position. We need a way to produce polymers cheaper, sustainably. Solugen became a $2b startup in 5 years by using sugar instead of oil as a base of these reactions – is there another source of carbon we can use instead?

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies are also prohibitively expensive – current high-quality solutions still cost >$1000 per ton of CO2 capture. With more than two-thirds of the Fortune 500 pledging net-zero goals in the next decade, a cost-efficient solution to decarbonization is worth billions.

Carbon-negative polymers from the air would be an answer to both problems. Not only is it good for us and the planet – it makes financial sense too. Carbon in the air is not just free, but there are those who would actively pay us to take it out (as opposed to oil). An optimized biomimetic enzyme solution would produce carbon credits at least 200x cheaper (~$5) than what is currently being done and certain industrial polymers at least an order of magnitude cheaper (while having the added benefit of being emissions-free). By integrating into the same process, both sides of the business effectively subsidize each other. Even though these are theoretical minimums, and we still have a lot of research to get through before getting there, we hope you see the vision for why something like this would be valuable.

Enough with the lofty ambitions. Polymers from the air – how are we actually doing this?

We are creating a platform that allows for both CDR and low-cost polymer manufacturing while sidestepping traditional roadblocks of scaling-up bacterial cultures using generative models and CRISPR.

We’ve figured out a way to make the most productive cyanobacterial species (cyanobacteria were the organisms behind the Great Oxidation Event ~2bn years ago) grow even faster – to the best of our knowledge and going through the literature on the topic, we have created the fastest photosynthesizing organism alive. We have also determined chemoenzymatic processes from the cyanobacteria’s enzyme output that can create starch from carbon. We are starting with starch as the quintessential polymer but hope to have a process that is generalizable enough to reapply to other more valuable polymers down the line.

We’re still early and actively researching but would love to hear your thoughts!

We are aware of the promises every year of a new biomanufacturing solution that will save us all with very little to show for it even after several decades – we hope you will excuse the youthful optimism when we say we think we have a decently good shot at making good on at least some of the above claims :)

We’re really excited to be launching and look forward to reading/responding to your comments and feedback!