Announcing Biosphere
By Brian Heligman
Standard Oil created the modern chemicals industry with their integrated refineries.
SpaceX transformed space access with the Falcon 9.
Nvidia’s H100 launched the AI revolution.
Each of these breakthroughs didn’t just transform an industry—they created entirely new economies and unlocked abundance that was once unimaginable.
Engineered biology could deliver a similar impact, revolutionizing industrial manufacturing and enabling a future defined by sustainability and abundance. However, scaling biomanufacturing has been a monumental challenge: labor-intensive, capital-heavy, and fraught with risk.
At Biosphere, we’ve made it our mission to break through these barriers and unleash the power of biology with transformative manufacturing technology.
Today, we’re emerging from stealth to announce a game-changing invention: the UV-sterilized bioreactor. This radical departure from legacy systems delivers dramatic improvements in reactor performance, providing $10–100M ARR bioproduct companies with the tools they need to scale their revenues 100x.
Built by Pragmatic Optimists
At our core, we are a team of ambitious engineers and scientists that believe we can leverage technology to positively impact the world at scale. Arye began by designing antibodies for targeted cancer detection, while I developed medical devices to manage complex genetic disorders. Next, he built lab networks for biotech startups, and I worked on reimagining electric vehicle battery production.
These experiences shaped our belief in the power of technology to tackle humanity’s most pressing challenges. We are hardcore definite optimists, convinced that the best way to reshape society is by empowering brilliant, determined people with the resources and tools they need.
When we met in 2022, we were captivated by the same problem: despite major advances in genetic engineering, bioproducts weren’t reaching the market due to manufacturing barriers. Together, we’ve assembled an extraordinary team of brilliant leaders to tackle the challenge head-on.
The Biotech Opportunity
Biomanufacturing uses engineered organisms to convert raw materials into valuable products—food, medicine, clothing, and fuel. It started with beer brewing, but has expanded to include a broad range of products like acetone, citric acid, spandex, and Ozempic.
We believe biology offers the best possible solution for producing a wide array of carbon-based products: efficient biomanufacturing is the key to delivering resilient, sustainable abundance to 10 billion people.
Imagine engineers reprogramming bacteria to create tailored biodegradable plastics or coaxing yeast to produce nutritionally complete infant formula. These examples aren’t science fiction; this technology exists today! Yet its large-scale deployment has been stifled by outdated production systems.
The Bottleneck: Legacy Reactors
Reactor sterilization is critical for fermentation, safeguarding purity and preventing contamination that can compromise product quality, safety, and yield. For decades, the industry has relied on steam-sterilized reactors—a 1940s invention originally designed for penicillin production. These reactors are labyrinthine systems of stainless steel pipes and valves, challenging to build and tricky to operate. When you see them, it’s no surprise that setting up a new biomanufacturing facility can require years of planning and $300m in capital costs.
For smaller companies, outsourcing production to contract manufacturers is often the only option. However, these manufacturers can rarely invest in new facilities themselves. In practice, outsourcing usually means your advanced product gets made at some antibiotic plant in rural Bulgaria that was fully depreciated 25 years ago. This reliance on outdated infrastructure stifles innovation and has kept biomanufacturing from reaching its full potential.
We need a revolution that replaces these complex, inefficient systems with a solution purpose built for modern industry.
Our Solution: UV Bioreactors
At Biosphere, we’ve reimagined biomanufacturing from the ground up. Steam sterilization has constrained what bioproducts can achieve, driving up costs and limiting scalability. By leveraging UV radiation and advanced materials, we’ve eliminated these constraints entirely, replacing complexity with simplicity and inefficiency with speed.
This isn’t just a marginal improvement—it’s a paradigm shift that redefines bioreactor design at a foundational level. This may sound like a bold claim, but ask any experienced bioprocess engineer and they’ll tell you: we’re not playing around on the margins.
After two years in stealth, we’re unveiling fully operational UV bioreactors and a clear roadmap to scaling production at an unprecedented pace.
The Future of Biomanufacturing
We envision a future where steam-in-place reactors are relics of the past, replaced by UV sterilized systems powering the production of every next-gen bioproduct. The journey begins in 2025 with the launch of our pilot reactor, designed in our commercial form factor. This reactor will allow partners to run trial production runs and experience the efficiency of our technology firsthand.
These reactor systems are now available to committed technology partners for trial runs and manufacturing services. This offering will provide companies the chance to validate our technology in an industrial setting while generating revenue that will fuel our growth.
Our pivotal milestone is developing a commercial-scale facility with capacity ranging from 100 to 1000 m³, a factory that will deliver unprecedented cost savings and scalability. This plant will mark a Starship-like turning point for biomanufacturing, enabling large-scale production of bioproducts with previously unimaginable economics.
Our long-term vision is the complete industrialization of photosynthesis, capturing CO2 and sunlight to create food and materials at global scale. We imagine a world where abundant solar energy powers sustainable biomanufacturing, transforming carbon emissions into protein-rich feedstocks and bio-based materials.
While this vision is still more than a decade away, we are confident it represents the inevitable future of global manufacturing. In the meantime, we’re laser-focused on building the industrial platform that today’s bioproduct companies need to scale profitably and efficiently.
Join Us!
For too long, groundbreaking bioproducts have struggled to reach the market, held back by outdated production systems and infrastructure. For too long, we’ve relied on extractive processes like petroleum refining and monocrop agriculture, enduring their significant environmental and economic costs.
At Biosphere, we’re here to change that. Our mission is to empower humanity with unprecedented control over engineered biological systems and unleash biomanufacturing’s transformative potential. Whether you’re an investor ready to support transformative innovation, a partner seeking scalable solutions, or a visionary builder eager to shape the future—we want to hear from you.
Let’s build the next era of industrial production together.