Inscripta Hopes to Put a Genome Editor in Everyone’s Hand

Kevin Ness has made a career of building tools for biologists. Now, with the burgeoning field of synthetic biology booming, he’s ramping up his latest venture, Inscripta, which wants to get a genome-engineering device into the hands of every scientist who wants one. The company has been operating largely under the radar, but with the announcement today that it had raised $125 million in a round led by Paladin Capital Group, for total funding of $260 million, it’s ready to make its mark.

“Our instrument is the early Apple. It’s the first personal computer for biology,” Ness told Forbes during a recent meeting in New York City.