The Pitch
There is an immediate opportunity to take agential biology to the next level by funding Fauna Systems as the first within a portfolio of ZOE’s companies.
Investment
Fall 2026 would come at a pivotal time. Fauna Systems is accelerating its R&D-driven customer discovery and has embarked on a search for its next CEO.
ICDO too needs a leader who will cultivate the burgeoning community of high-powered researchers from a mix of adjacent fields, as well as interest from diverse sectors of industry and in government (e.g. ARPA, DARPA, IARPA). ICDO could coordinate such actors to tremendous effect on behalf of an important, emerging field as well as directly driving basic research leading to commercialization of biobots.
Proposed Framework
We are asking for a $3M total commitment: $2M into Fauna as the lead of a $3–5M round to (a) catalyze the hire of the new CEO and (b) scale up the pace and scope of R&D-driven customer discovery ahead of the Series A (planned for ~2028); and $1M to ICDO to develop community.
Fauna investment — $2M
Lead a $3–5M round to attract the new CEO and provide the runway they needs to be successful: fund Fauna lab space and personnel, fund the parallelization of R&D. The primary goal is to position the company for a fulsome Series A.
The proposed structure is a capped SAFE — the same structure as the $1.9M seed round. Fauna’s Board believes that a SAFE is still preferable to priced equity, given how hard it is to value a company at this early stage, but is open to a priced round.
ICDO commitment — $1M
$1M to take ICDO to the next level, concretizing it as the leader of a new field, biology and AI: engage the nascent scientific community around agential biology (AI, robotics, material science, synthetic biology, etc.); attract talented and ambitious PIs; create a research hub outside of existing institutional norms to be as creative and courageous as possible; identify and recruit new stakeholders in industry and government.