Fauna Systems

Fauna Systems develops programmable biobots, also called xenobots — small, living systems built from frog-derived cells that can move, sense their surroundings, and safely biodegrade afterward. The company's technology builds on xenobot research originating at Tufts University and the University of Vermont, using an AI-driven design process to hypothesize millions of candidate biobot configurations, generate digital twins of each, and then assemble and test the most promising ones in a wet lab. Fauna is targeting commercially valuable use cases that conventional chemistry, machinery, or automation cannot easily address, including environmental remediation such as pollutant detection and cleanup, human-health applications like targeted payload delivery, and broader bioengineering research. Co-founders Michael Levin and Joshua Bongard, along with collaborators Sam Kriegman and Doug Blackiston, produced a 2020 paper unveiling the world's first computer-designed living organism, work covered by the New York Times as the origin of a 'new class of living robotics.'