The synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks announced the acquisition of two companies: French-based Altar and Circularis, located in Oakland, CA. The news comes just months after Ginkgo’s largest acquisition to date—when the company acquired Zymergen for $300M this past summer.
Founded in 2017, Altar has developed a proprietary adaptive evolution platform (based on their Genemat technology) which enables continuous cultivation of microorganisms under selective pressure controlled by algorithms. Ginkgo’s acquisition will bring Altar’s automated adaptive laboratory evolution (ALE) instruments to Ginkgo’s Foundry in Boston.
