Welcome to Fermeate

We're building something that we believe will change the economics of industrial fermentation.

Fermeate is an optogenetics platform for industrial biomanufacturing. In plain terms: we engineer light-sensitive switches into production microbes, and then deliver precise pulses of light during a fermentation run to flip those switches — shifting the biology in real time without stopping the process.

The problem we're solving

Industrial fermentation has a control problem. Producers spend months or years optimizing their organisms in the lab. But the moment a production run begins, that work is locked in. If the biology drifts, or the metabolic balance is off, or the feedstock changes — operators can only watch.

We give them a steering wheel.

Who we are

Fermeate was founded by Kevin Xu and Saurab Malani, both PhDs from Princeton in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Our team brings together expertise in synthetic biology, strain engineering, and industrial process development.

We're based in San Francisco and working with partners across amino acid production, biofuels, agricultural biologicals, and more.

What's next

We'll be sharing more about the technology, our team, and our progress here. If you're a fermentation producer or investor and want to learn more, get in touch.