Biology will be the center of the next industrial revolution, representing a $4 trillion economic opportunity. Yet, this value remains overwhelmingly unrealised for one fundamental reason: nature never intended to power industrial manufacturing. Biology was optimized for survival, not for the high-efficiency processes required to transform the global economy. For too long, the industry has relied on incremental improvements, essentially duct-taping enzymes and calling them industrial. At Biomatter, we believe that complete freedom to design any enzyme is the only way to realize the full potential of biomanufacturing. By combining Generative AI with rigorous physics engines, our Intelligent Architecture™ platform allows us to step outside the bounds of natural selection and build enzymes from the bottom up. We are turning the "previously impossible" into routine. From liberating enzymes of their cofactor dependencies for mRNA raw materials to designing lactases that reject the trade-off between lactose removal and high GOS fiber formation, we are proving that biology’s limits are negotiable. Join us to see how we are building the enzymes nature couldn't.

Biotechnology is enabling a new generation of ingredients that elevate both product performance and sustainability. In this fireside chat, leaders from Procter & Gamble will discuss how biotech is being applied across key material classes to enhance consumer products, highlighting innovations behind their latest Native launch and emerging bio-derived ingredients for hair and beauty. The conversation will also explore how biotech platforms are helping shape the future of high-performing, sustainable consumer goods.

Our industrial economy was built on energy-intensive, centralized manufacturing. The future economy will be grown with biology—making what we need, where we need it, when we need it—with superior unit economics and seamless integration into nature. The bottleneck: biotech has largely been confined to fermenters. Switch Bioworks breaks that constraint by engineering microbes that operate directly in nature—starting with agriculture. Today, 4 billion people depend on expensive synthetic fertilizer for food security—a $200B market. Switch is replacing it with engineered microbes that colonize plant roots and “switch” on fertilizer production precisely when needed. This time-controlled switching architecture solves the tradeoffs that have limited prior biofertilizers and delivers unbeatable unit economics for farmers. Founded by Tim Schnabel, who invented the core technology at Stanford, Switch is led by a world-class team spanning microbial engineering, ag commercialization, IP, and regulatory leadership, with advisors from Corteva, BASF, Syngenta, Nutrien, and leading universities. Switch is preparing to raise a Series A to reach commercialization and lead the Biology on Demand movement. Fertilizer has opened the door, the platform is ready for more.

Meat is one of the world’s most complex biomanufacturing systems—and also one of its least optimized. For 12,000 years, we’ve cycled crops through animals to make meat. Drawing from his new book Meat, Bruce Friedrich contends that advances across science and engineering now make it possible to produce meat far more efficiently, which will reduce meat’s contribution to hunger, climate change, deforestation, antibiotic resistance, and pandemic risk. Most importantly for the success of alternative meats, these new technologies will also improve food security and add to GDP for the nations that lean in. It’s been exactly ten years since the first plant-based burgers were introduced and also exactly ten years since the first cultivated meat companies were incorporated. Bruce will reflect on how far we’ve come, how far we have to go, and what it's going to take to get there. Welcome to the next agricultural revolution—courtesy of science.

For decades, pharmaceutical supply chains were optimized for cost and scale, stretching across continents to source critical active ingredients. But fragility has made resilience a strategic imperative. Synthetic biology offers a new model: onshoring the production of essential APIs by programming cells to manufacture small molecules, peptides, and novel amino acids with precision and scalability. Instead of relying on distant chemical supply networks, biology becomes the factory—flexible, distributed, and programmable. This session explores how engineered microbes and directed evolution platforms are rebuilding pharma supply chains from the molecular level up, enabling secure, responsive, and locally anchored production of the medicines the world depends on.

Scaling bio-based products requires integrated technical collaboration across strain engineering, fermentation, downstream processing, and analytics. Full-stack approaches—where startups, CDMOs, and platform technology providers align early on—can optimize yield, reduce variability, and lower cost of goods (COGS) at commercial scale. This session explores case studies of cross-company collaboration, from co-development of microbial strains and bioreactor designs to shared process analytics and predictive modeling. Hear how teams are breaking down technical silos to accelerate scale-up, improve reproducibility, and create competitive, sustainable manufacturing solutions that bring synthetic biology products from the lab to the market efficiently.

Biotech is no longer behind the scenes—it’s on our shelves, in our homes, and part of our daily routines. From sustainable haircare to household cleaning, and high-performance materials, bio-based innovations are redefining everyday consumer experiences. This session explores what drives adoption, how brands communicate the value of biology, and why trust, transparency, and performance are key to building loyalty. Join us to hear from the companies making biology irresistible, accessible, and seamlessly integrated into daily life—and learn what it takes to create bio-products consumers truly love.

Industrial biotech faces repeated “valleys of death” between laboratory success and commercial manufacturing, driven by a combination of technological uncertainty, scale-dependent constraints, and (mis)alignment between engineering reality and investment expectations. Promising technologies often fail not because the science is wrong, but because scale-up trajectories are built on insufficient data, optimistic assumptions, and decision-making based on the 1st product specifications from the lab that do not translate to industrial conditions. This panel returns to fundamentals, drawing on real-world experience from piloting, process engineering, and early industrialization to examine where and why scale-up breaks down. Experts will discuss how important the scale-up journey is to align technology performance with investor expectations, support sound business cases, and turn the industrial biotech toolbox into a more robust, scalable, and profitable manufacturing platform.

Scaling bio-based products to commercial production requires balancing technical readiness with market and financial realities. This session examines the capital investments, regulatory planning, and supply chain strategies necessary to move beyond the pilot stage. Experts will share lessons on aligning production capacity with demand forecasts, managing operational risk, and structuring partnerships that unlock funding and market access. Attendees will gain practical insights into navigating investor expectations, scaling efficiently without compromising quality, and making strategic decisions that ensure products can succeed commercially while meeting evolving market needs and sustainability goals.

Mining has long relied on brute force and chemistry, but biology is opening a new frontier. Biomining uses engineered microbes to extract metals and minerals with precision, efficiency, and far less environmental impact than traditional methods. From rare earth elements essential to clean energy to critical metals powering electronics, synthetic biology is reshaping how we source the building blocks of modern life. This session spotlights innovators designing bio-based recovery systems, scaling sustainable solutions, and reimagining resource extraction.

For more than a century, everyday products - from detergents and shampoos to textiles and packaging - have relied on petrochemicals and harsh industrial processes. Today, AI-driven protein design is opening a radically different path: creating custom enzymes and biomolecules that outperform traditional chemistry while reducing environmental impact. This session explores how advances in computational protein design and machine learning enable the rational creation of enzymes tailored for home care, personal care, and next-generation materials—moving beyond incremental discovery to purpose-built performance under real industrial conditions. Critically, this highlights how AI-driven design is being translated into commercially deployed products at scale with partners and customers.

Biologics and engineered proteins have traditionally evolved through cycles of intuition, screening, and incremental optimization. Today, AI is transforming proteins into programmable systems; governed by learnable patterns across activity, stability, expression, specificity, manufacturability, and environmental performance. This shift is unlocking a new generation of biomolecules, from next-generation therapeutics to sustainable enzymes and functional biological systems, that would have been impossible to design by hand. In this session, leaders from biopharma, industrial biotech, machine learning, and protein engineering will explore how multiparameter optimization, generative modeling, and closed-loop experimental validation are reshaping biomolecular design across domains. From clinical biologics to planetary-scale applications, we examine the shift from trial-and-error to predictive, constraint-driven design, and what it means for R&D timelines, scalability, and real-world impact.

For billions of years, evolution has been biology’s most powerful search engine. Now researchers are beginning to redesign that engine itself. From orthogonal replication systems like OrthoRep to synthetic genomes, programmable mutation systems, and continuous evolution platforms, new tools are making it possible to evolve biological function with unprecedented speed, control, and scale. This session explores how synthetic evolution is becoming a core technology of programmable biology. Speakers will examine how engineered replication, genome-scale design, and AI-informed selection strategies are expanding the range of molecules, pathways, and phenotypes that can be discovered in the lab. By moving from passively observing evolution to actively directing it, scientists are opening a new frontier where genomes are not just edited, but built and evolved as programmable systems.

Plant-based food sales may be slowing, but that doesn’t mean innovation on the plate is stalling. Instead, momentum is shifting toward breakthrough technologies and smarter ingredient combinations. Cultured meat and precision fermentation are driving the next wave of sustainable ingredients, from proteins to cultured fats that bring authentic flavor and texture. This session highlights advances in cell culture, fermentation platforms, and scale-up strategies, along with the partnerships moving products from R&D to dining tables. Hear how food innovators are combining biology and culinary creativity to build a resilient, delicious, and sustainable future for global diets.

Venture capital alone is no longer enough to power the next wave of biotechnology innovation. Across health, biosecurity, climate, and advanced biomanufacturing, government agencies are emerging as catalytic partners, deploying billions in non-dilutive funding to accelerate high-risk, high-impact breakthroughs. But accessing this capital requires more than strong science. Founders must understand how agencies like ARPA-H, DARPA, BARDA, and others evaluate risk, define mission impact, and structure partnerships that bridge research and real-world deployment. This session brings together agency leaders, founders, and experienced operators to demystify how government funding actually works in today’s market. The panelists will explore how startups can position themselves for success, avoid common pitfalls in proposal development and contracting, and strategically leverage non-dilutive funding to extend runway, de-risk technology, and unlock new commercial pathways.

AI is transforming biology into a fully integrated computational discipline, where discovery depends on the seamless interaction between models, compute infrastructure, and experimental systems. As foundation models for proteins, genomes, and cellular systems mature, the challenge is no longer prediction alone. It is building a unified stack that connects generative design, large-scale computation, and rapid experimental feedback into continuous learning loops. This session explores how the next generation of computational biology platforms is emerging at the intersection of cloud computing, GPU-accelerated modeling, advanced simulation, and high-throughput experimental infrastructure. Leaders across AI, biotech, and technology will discuss how tightly integrated design-build-test-learn cycles are reshaping therapeutic discovery, enabling adaptive model refinement, and accelerating the transition from in silico hypotheses to real-world biological outcomes.

While foundation models have demonstrated broad potential in protein engineering, their generic nature often falls short at the industrial "last mile"—where narrow tolerance windows, non-natural substrates, and harsh process conditions prevail. To adapt to these challenges, we integrate decades of enzyme engineering experience with proprietary high-fidelity domain-specific datasets, powered by our CFPS‑driven high‑throughput screening platform (>100× throughput over traditional directed evolution, enabling precise domain-specific annotation). This approach enables us to build practical vertical AI models that have been validated in real‑world production settings, demonstrating improved accuracy over general‑purpose models and paving the way toward an integrated Enzyme Co‑Pilot for reliable, data‑driven biocatalysis. 

Metabolic engineering is entering a new phase of programmability, evolving from mechanistic models toward AI-driven systems that can design, test, and refine biology with increasing autonomy. Early efforts to combine genome-scale modeling with machine learning began to improve genotype to phenotype prediction, hinting at a more predictive and designable biology. Today, that paradigm is advancing into a new layer. Agentic AI systems are beginning to orchestrate the full design, build, test, learn cycle. These platforms integrate experimental data, automation, and decision-making into continuous closed loop workflows, enabling faster iteration and more intelligent exploration of biological space. This session explores the next frontier of metabolic engineering, examining long standing bottlenecks such as limited data, combinatorial design complexity, and slow iteration cycles, and how AI native, end to end platforms are transforming pathway design, strain optimization, and scalable biomanufacturing.

Climate volatility is reshaping the future of food, demanding plants that can withstand heat, drought, and disease. Synthetic biology offers powerful tools to accelerate adaptation—engineering plants with traits that once took decades to breed. This session explores how innovators are designing resilient plants, building platforms for rapid trait development, and forging collaborations across agtech, biotech, multinationals, and policy. Join us to hear how synbio is moving beyond the lab to the field, reshaping agriculture for resilience, and ensuring farmers worldwide can thrive in the face of climate uncertainty.

Conventional batch fermentation has long been the backbone of industrial biotechnology — but a new wave of platforms is challenging that paradigm. From continuous and gas fermentation to novel feedstock integration, emerging approaches promise greater efficiency, flexibility, and scalability. So what's actually holding them back, and what will it take to move them forward? This panel brings together practitioners and innovators working at the frontier of alternative fermentation systems to explore the enablers, accelerators, and real-world lessons shaping the path ahead. Rather than debating which technology "wins," we'll examine the shared challenges across platforms: navigating the pilot-to-commercial scale-up journey, working with non-traditional feedstocks, and building the infrastructure and partnerships that turn promising science into viable processes. Whether you're deep in the lab or making investment and deployment decisions, this conversation will surface concrete insights on what's needed — technically, operationally, and systemically — to unlock the next generation of fermentation.

Synthetic biology has long offererd vibrant pigments and functional ingredients with consistency, scalability, and improved sustainability. While many US policy shifts are creating headwinds for biotech innovation, the regulatory momentum around food colors and ingredients could open a significant opportunity for synbio adoption. This session examines the opportunities and risks ahead, highlighting how innovators can align with shifting rules, build trust, and bring bio-based ingredients from lab to label in a rapidly evolving food landscape.

How can local communities benefit from biotechnology? This session explores strategies for building decentralized biotech ecosystems that support local innovation, shared ownership, and resilient bioeconomies. By aligning biotechnology with planetary stewardship and place-based knowledge, we highlight a new era of bio-based products and initiatives led by founders bringing their culture and community into biotechnology.

Enzymes are becoming the precision tools behind cleaner, more efficient, and more sustainable production across both home-care and food manufacturing. In cleaning products, next-generation enzymes replace harsh chemicals with biodegradable, high-performance biocatalysts that work at lower temperatures and deliver superior stain, odor, and grease removal. In food processing, engineered proteases, lipases, amylases, and fiber-modifying enzymes are unlocking new textures, cleaner labels, better stability, and reduced energy use—reshaping how everything from dairy and bakery to beverages and plant proteins are made.

Cell-free systems are redefining what’s possible in bioproduction. By bypassing the complexity of living cells, innovators can run enzyme cascades, prototype metabolic pathways, and produce high-value molecules with unmatched speed, precision, and purity. This new class of systems—from freeze-dried reactions to continuous cell-free reactors—enables rapid iteration, on-demand production, and scalable biochemistry without the need for fermentation tanks or long development cycles.

Bio-based food innovation rarely fails in the lab. It fails in the transition to scale. Between pilot success and commercial launch lie the hardest problems in food: reliable feedstocks, waste stream integration, regulatory approval, capital intensity, and infrastructure built for yesterday’s products. This session brings together leaders across law, industrial food systems, waste valorization, and next-generation proteins to examine what it actually takes to move biological food innovations from concept to shelf. Panelists will explore where risk truly accumulates in bio-based food development, how incumbents and startups navigate scale differently, and why waste streams, compliance strategy, and supply chain design often matter more than the underlying biology. The result is a grounded conversation about what survives real-world constraints, not just what sounds compelling on paper.

A mission to Mars is as much a biomedical challenge as it is an engineering one. Microgravity, radiation, immune dysfunction, and limited medical infrastructure transform routine health risks into mission-critical threats. Survival on another planet will depend on our ability to predict, monitor, and treat disease far from Earth. This session explores how bioengineering is tackling NASA’s biggest human health risks: bioregenerative life-support systems that recycle essential resources, human organoids that model physiology in space, computational tools to decode complex omics data in real time, compact sequencing and onboard analysis platforms that shrink the lab to spacecraft scale, and novel pharmacologic strategies designed for deep-space missions. On the journey to Mars, medicine won’t just travel with astronauts — it will be engineered alongside them.