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It’s not a sto­ry you hear every day: A biotech com­pa­ny that doesn’t use its plat­form to de­vel­op ther­a­peu­tics? De­spite some raised eye­brows ear­ly on, Emeryville, CA-based Zymer­gen has con­vinced in­vestors that its plan to dis­rupt in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing is worth the bet and now it’s priced an eye-pop­ping IPO to take its mis­sion to the next lev­el.

Syn­thet­ic bi­ol­o­gy firm Zymer­gen late Wednes­day priced its 16.13 mil­lion shares at $31, good for a pub­lic of­fer­ing in the range of $500 mil­lion, which would put the com­pa­ny in rar­i­fied air along with Sana Biotech­nol­o­gy as biotech com­pa­nies with half-bil­lion-dol­lar or more IPOs this year, ac­cord­ing to End­points News’ IPO track­er.

The up­sized pric­ing — Zymer­gen ini­tial­ly pen­ciled in a $100 mil­lion cash raise in its S-1 fil­ing last month  — puts Zymer­gen on track to con­tin­ue de­vel­op­ing its de­sign­er mol­e­cules it plans to use to dis­rupt a $3 tril­lion in­dus­tri­al man­u­fac­tur­ing mar­ket with ap­pli­ca­tions as far and wide as con­sumer care, agri­cul­ture and elec­tron­ics.

The com­pa­ny plans to get there by us­ing a process it calls “bio­fac­tur­ing,” us­ing ge­net­i­cal­ly en­gi­neered mol­e­cules to pro­duce in­dus­tri­al-grade prod­ucts with­out the need for tox­ic chem­i­cals of­ten used in the process or ex­pen­sive in­fra­struc­ture. All told, the com­pa­ny thinks it can cut costs by about 90% across the in­dus­try and pro­duce the same ma­te­ri­als in half the time.

It’s a fo­cus that has of­ten not been re­ward­ed among biotech in­vestors look­ing for a clear path to ther­a­pies, but Zymer­gen be­lieves it’s found its own huge un­met need — and the case keeps on flow­ing in. The $500 mil­lion cash raise comes on the heels of a $400 mil­lion Se­ries C back in 2018 and a $300 mil­lion raise in Sep­tem­ber.

All told, the com­pa­ny has raised some­where in the ball­park of $1.375 bil­lion since its ini­tial seed round way back in 2014.

While the com­pa­ny has broad am­bi­tions for its pipeline, it has just one prod­uct on the mar­ket: Hya­line, a high-qual­i­ty op­ti­cal film used in elec­tron­ics. Mean­while, the biotech is pur­su­ing can­di­dates across a trio of elec­tron­ics, agri­cul­ture and con­sumer care. Those ar­eas alone, it be­lieves, of­fer a mar­ket op­por­tu­ni­ty of about $1.2 tril­lion.

Zymer­gen plans a slate of roll­outs in those mar­kets in 2022 and 2023 and will use Hya­line as its ca­nary in the coal mine in terms of con­sumer in­ter­est. If all goes to plan, Zymer­gen thinks its bio­fac­tur­ing mod­el could prove dis­rup­tive across a range of in­dus­tries, po­ten­tial­ly crack­ing open its lofty $3 tril­lion mar­ket goals.

“Our pipeline of prod­ucts has been de­signed with rapid mar­ket adop­tion in mind,” the com­pa­ny said in its prospec­tus. “In ad­di­tion, these prod­ucts demon­strate our bio­fac­tur­ing plat­form’s abil­i­ty to de­vel­op com­mer­cial­ly rel­e­vant prod­ucts across mul­ti­ple ma­jor dis­tinct chem­i­cal class­es.”

With his name already behind a rare disease success story in Alexion, Stephen Squinto was looking for a great story to drive him to jump back into the biotech game. He found that in a fledging non-viral gene therapy company, and now he’s got a few backers on board as well.

On Tuesday, Gennao Bio launched with a $40 million Series A co-led by OrbiMed and Logos Capital with participation by Surveyor Capital. The biotech, which is looking to use its cell-penetrating antibody platform to deliver nucleic acid “payloads” during into the nucleus, had to rush for its initial series — and had a name change along the way.

Money is flying for companies promising to revolutionize the way clinical trials are conducted. Leaps by Bayer is the latest to get behind one of these players, leading a $200 million venture round for Huma Therapeutics and its digital “hospital at home” tech.

London-based Huma unveiled a $130 million Series C on Wednesday, which it will use to expand its digital platform in the US, Asia and the Middle East. As part of the round, the company can exercise another $70 million commitment later on.

Caris Life Sciences has pulled in another massive raise, and this time they’re reportedly one step closer to launching their IPO.

The AI-focused Caris pulled in an $830 million growth equity round, the company announced Tuesday afternoon, earning a valuation of about $7.83 billion. Tuesday’s raise also brings their total financing amount to $1.3 billion since 2018 and $1.14 billion since last October. According to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the raise, Caris expects to complete their IPO sometime within the next 12 months.