Synthetic biology · Consumer plant engineering
TAXA Biotechnologies
The company behind the first synthetic biology crowdfunding campaign. It took $484,013 to make a plant that glowed in the dark, never shipped one, sold scented moss instead, and stopped operating by 2017.
A grow tent in a SoMa basement
In late January 2017, Antony Evans unzipped a black tent in a basement off Third Street in San Francisco and let a WIRED reporter step inside. It was the kind of tent marijuana growers use. What hit her was patchouli. Petri dishes on a table held clusters of green moss.
After four years, his company was two months from shipping its first product: a moss engineered to smell like patchouli oil, sold in a terrarium for $50 to $80.
The story that ran three months later was a different one. The moss had been contaminated. And the thing everyone knew the company for, a plant that glows in the dark, was finished. “We’re sorry to say that we have reached a significant transition point,” Evans wrote to backers in April 2017.
What eight thousand people bought
The campaign went live on Kickstarter in April 2013 as Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity. The pitch was six genes from bioluminescent bacteria, dropped into a plant, producing light without a wall socket. Streetlamps made of trees, eventually. A night light on a desk, first.
Pledge $40 and you were promised seeds within a year. The project page records the result: 8,433 backers, $484,013 pledged, against a $65,000 goal.
The backlash changed the platform. On July 31, 2013, Kickstarter added a rule: projects cannot offer genetically modified organisms as a reward. The Verge reported it two days later. The campaign was grandfathered in. The ETC Group had already written to USDA APHIS, objecting that up to 238,000 engineered Arabidopsis seeds were about to reach roughly 2,380 addresses with no federal review.
A marketer, a software founder and a plant scientist
Evans read mathematics at Cambridge, worked years in finance in London, and came to San Francisco in 2008. He built a mobile symptom checker app that reached about a quarter of a million users and made little money. In 2011 he went through Singularity University and came out convinced biology was the only sustainable technology.
At an alumni event he met Omri Amirav-Drory, a biochemist running a DNA design software company called Genome Compiler, who suggested a Kickstarter. Evans then met Kyle Taylor, a Stanford plant science PhD, at the BioCurious hackerspace. They designed a construct and ordered the DNA by mail.
Taylor never saw it as a product. “I viewed it as educational. But that isn’t the way it was viewed by others,” he told MIT Technology Review. He resigned in 2015.
The regulatory argument was the business model
The company renamed itself TAXA and repositioned around a platform: protein engineering, automated DNA assembly, transient experiments and stable transformation, sold as a service. The selling point was that nothing built on it would need a federal review.
That claim rested on two letters that are public. On October 1, 2014, writing as Glowing Plant, Inc., Evans asked APHIS to confirm that a bioluminescent Arabidopsis transformed by gene gun rather than by Agrobacterium was not a regulated article. Answering a follow-up letter of October 5, 2015 about engineered tobacco, APHIS agreed: no plant pests in the recipient, the donors or the method. The regulatory reading held. It did not make the science work.
Moss, then nothing
Money ran short. In May 2016, after Title III of the JOBS Act took effect, TAXA filed a Form C and opened an equity round on Wefunder. It closed on August 9, 2016 at $309,807.
Orbella, the fragrant moss, began shipping on July 25, 2017 in patchouli, linalool and geraniol at $79. A case study puts the run at about 400 units in two months. Wikipedia records that the company told people by email in December 2017 that it was permanently ceasing operations. The last thing TAXA filed with the SEC is its 2016 annual report, signed by Evans on May 1, 2017.
What is proven, and what is still claimed
| Evidence | What the record shows | Source type |
|---|---|---|
| Kickstarter campaign | 8,433 backers, $484,013 pledged against a $65,000 goal, 2013. The page shows 69 updates and 1,369 comments, last updated December 11, 2017. | Public record |
| USDA APHIS inquiry | Letter of October 1, 2014 from Glowing Plant, Inc. asking APHIS to confirm that gene gun transformed bioluminescent Arabidopsis is not a regulated article. | Public record |
| APHIS response 15-296-01 | On engineered Nicotiana tabacum: no plant pests among recipient, donors or biolistic method, so not regulated under 7 CFR part 340. Product performance was never at issue. | Public record |
| A plant that glows on its own | Not delivered. MIT Technology Review reported in July 2016 that the project had made no plants that emit light unassisted and that the promised seeds were two years overdue. | Not delivered |
| The shipped glowing plant | Wefunder lists as a fact that TAXA shipped the lowest cost genetically engineered plant ever sold commercially. In the transcript filed with the SEC, Evans said that version needed an external substrate and was not bright yet. The APHIS letters describe a plant that glows only on addition of a proprietary formula. | Narrower than claimed |
| Regulation Crowdfunding | Form C filed May 16, 2016; target cut to $200,000 on June 1; maximum $1,000,000; security offered was a SAFE. Closed August 9, 2016 at $309,807. | Public record |
| Position at the end | Form C-AR for 2016: three employees, revenue $3,892, net loss $366,880, cash $182,977. Prior year revenue $5,694, loss $298,573. | Public record |
| Orbella fragrant moss | Shipping began July 25, 2017 per the company’s investor update. Business Insider confirmed sale in mid August 2017, three scents, $79. | Independent |
| Research partners | Three collaborative research agreements signed, per Wefunder and the 2016 release. No partner named publicly. | Company-stated |
| Papers and patents | No PubMed record under either company name. No granted patent found under either assignee. | Not found |
Read plainly: TAXA won the argument with the USDA and lost the argument with the plant. The distance between a clear regulatory path and a working organism is the whole story.
What to watch
- Refunds. The 2016 annual report flagged as a risk that backers holding nearly $600,000 of pre-orders might demand refunds or sue after the April 2017 cancellation. No litigation has surfaced.
- The SEC file. A Regulation Crowdfunding issuer owes an annual report each year until it winds up. TAXA filed one, then nothing.
- The idea in other hands. USDA approved Light Bio in September 2023 to sell a bioluminescent petunia built on a glowing fungus pathway, not the bacterial genes TAXA used.
- The domain. taxa.com now resolves to an unrelated business. The Y Combinator directory still carries the page, marked inactive.
In their words
“We would like to see every house have genetically modified organisms.”
Antony Evans, CEO, to TechCrunch, 2014 · Independent
“it puts synthetic biology in the same category on Kickstarter as hate crimes and tobacco.”
Omri Amirav-Drory, co-creator and CEO of Genome Compiler, to The Verge, 2013 · Independent
“We are late on the product, way later than I ever expected.”
Antony Evans, Wefunder podcast transcript filed with the SEC as a Form C/A exhibit, 2016 · Public record
“We’ve tested 500 different fragments of DNA now and we finally got one that like we think it’s okay and then we used that, we put it in the plant and none of them glowed.”
Antony Evans, same transcript, on the February 2016 result · Public record
“It was a poor choice of product. It’s on the edge of what’s possible.”
Antony Evans, to MIT Technology Review, July 2016 · Independent
“They didn’t deliver anything for three years, and I strongly doubt they ever will.”
Alexander Krichevsky, founder of Bioglow, to MIT Technology Review, 2016 · Independent
“What it says is that biotechnology is not as easy as portrayed in the popular media.”
Todd Kuiken, Woodrow Wilson Center, and a backer, to MIT Technology Review, 2016 · Independent
“I’m sorry that we’ve let you down on delivering the Glowing Plant.”
Antony Evans, Kickstarter update, April 2017, quoted by WIRED · Independent
Related companies
Sources
- Public recordForm C and three amendments, CIK 0001674082
- Public recordForm C-U progress updates
- Public recordForm C-AR annual report for 2016
- Public recordForm C/A exhibit, Wefunder podcast transcript
- Public recordAm I Regulated letter of inquiry, bioluminescent Arabidopsis
- Public recordAPHIS response 15-296-01, bioluminescent Nicotiana tabacum
- Public recordGlowing Plants project page and updates
- IndependentInside the Glowing-Plant Startup That Just Gave up Its Quest
- IndependentWhy Kickstarter’s Glowing Plant Left Backers in the Dark
- IndependentOne of the most controversial Kickstarter campaigns in history is dead
- IndependentGlowing Plant Is One Of Y Combinator’s Very First Biotech Startups
- IndependentThe Guy Behind Long-Delayed Glowing Plants Kickstarter Wants to Sell You Moss
- IndependentKickstarter bans project creators from giving away GMOs
- IndependentGlowing Plant project
- IndependentTAXA Biotechnologies Inc.: A Genetic Engineering Start-up
- IndependentKickstopper Letter to USDA APHIS
- CompanyTAXA to Close Out Regulation Crowdfunding Campaign on Wefunder
- CompanyTAXA Biotechnologies profile and quick facts
- CompanyTell your friends about Orbella, investor update
- CompanyY Combinator directory record, batch S14, status inactive
- Public recordtaxa.com current landing page, unrelated business
- IndependentWhat a bioluminescent petunia had to teach me
Profile researched and written by Healthcare Discovery. Last updated September 29, 2026.
