Kleiner Funds DNA Synthesizer Startup

Kleiner Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm that funded Google, Amazon, and Netscape, on June 1 announced a cross-country venture with a $13 million Series A investment in Codon Devices, a Cambridge, Mass., startup created by George Church of Harvard, Drew Endy and Joseph Jacobson of MIT, and Jay Keasling of UC-Berkeley.

The funding will bring Mike Hunkapiller, the former head of Applied Biosystems now a VC at Alloy, to the company as a board member, joining Kleiner VC Vinod Khosla, the founding CEO of Sun Microsystems. Church, who is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Computational Genetics, will serve as chief science officer.

Flagship Ventures joined Alloy Ventures and Kleiner Perkins and undisclosed private investors taking equal shares in the funding.

Codon is developing a technology to synthesize DNA for applications in molecular-biology resarch, cell engineering, and biotherapeutics. according to the company.

The funding is significant in that a leading VC firm has strayed from the
pack in making an investment in a molecular biology tools technology and a startup -- without any sort of product or customer, only the promise of a technology. This may be a signal that Silicon Valley VC firms may be ready to invest in early-stage molecular tools technology and ideas.

“Codon Devices was an attractive investment for us because it combines breakthrough technology, strong intellectual property, large commercial markets and a group of outstanding scientific founders," Hunkapiller said in a statement.