Bota Bio

Bota Bio (恩和生物 / Enhe Biotechnology) is a global biomanufacturing company founded in 2019 by CEO Cheryl Cui, a Harvard-MIT Medical Engineering and Biophysics PhD . The company has repositioned itself from a synthetic biology platform to what it now calls a "Physical AI-driven bio-manufacturing" firm, anchored by its SAION AI platform launched in March 2026 .

Bota Bio's core infrastructure is the Bota Freeway® Biofoundry, an automated strain and process development platform that integrates computational design with lab automation and industrial-scale production . The company operates across food, nutrition, personal care, and pharmaceutical sectors — with commercialized projects including a biopreservation product line and a partnership with fine chemicals leader NHU that reached commercial scale in 2024 . In personal care, it runs a subsidiary Yucca Elements (青然新护) supplying bio-identical protein ingredients to domestic skincare brands , and in May 2025 secured a strategic partnership with Proya — the first such deal between a synthetic biology company and the cosmetics group .

The company has raised over $145 million in total, including a $100 million+ Series B in 2021 led by Sequoia China with follow-on from Source Code Capital, 5Y Capital, and others . As of early 2024, Bota Bio employed roughly 200 people and had begun industrialization .