AI x Industrial Biotech: A Conversation with Moji Karimi

Biology can turn waste into products, recover metals, treat water, and make energy and materials. AI could make it happen a lot faster.

Moji Karimi is the CEO and Co-Founder of Cemvita.

He's a petroleum engineer who spent nine years making microbes work in oil fields, mines, and industrial plants, including scaling waste-carbon-to-bio-oil to a 75,000-liter demo. Last month Cemvita launched Frontier, a frontier AI lab for industrial BioSolutions, and named Roebling, an AI-native engineering firm, as its engineering partner.

What we want to dig into:
- Why do promising industrial strains die between the lab and the plant?
- Can AI kill bad projects on paper before anyone pours concrete?
- What data does industrial biology need that nobody is collecting yet?
- Who pays for BioSolutions, and what do they need to see first? For founders, scientists, engineers, operators, and investors working in industrial biology, energy, mining, water, and materials.

About the hosts:

Cemvita is building a frontier AI lab for industrial BioSolutions. Founded in Houston in 2017, the company engineers microbes for the natural-resource industries, from turning waste carbon into oil to biomining and water treatment, and is now pairing nine years of proprietary biological data with AI to move BioSolutions from discovery to deployment faster.

Bits in Bio: connects the bio-economy. We bring together people working at the intersection of software, AI, and biology, with a global community of over 14,000 members and chapters in cities around the world. The SF chapter runs regular meetups, panels, and small-group conversations like this one.