Barnwell Bio Raises $6M to Expand Metagenomic Biosurveillance for U.S. Poultry Sector

New updates have been reported about Barnwell Bio.

Barnwell Bio has secured $6 million in seed financing to accelerate deployment of its metagenomic biosurveillance platform across the U.S. poultry industry, a move that materially expands its commercial footprint and data capabilities in a market under mounting regulatory and disease pressure. The round was led by Twelve Below with participation from several venture and ag-focused investors, and will fund expansion across the Midwest and Southeast poultry belt, recruitment of specialized talent in bioinformatics, data science, and AI/ML, and further development of Barnwell’s proprietary insights engine. Founded by executives who helped build the U.S. COVID-19 wastewater monitoring system, Barnwell Bio applies similar large-scale, environment-level surveillance to poultry barns, generating a unique “microbiome fingerprint” for each facility and converting hundreds of thousands of metagenomic data points into actionable, early-warning intelligence for producers and veterinarians. CEO and co-founder Michael Rhys said the company aims to replace guesswork in barn health management with data-driven decision-making, providing producers with visibility into complex microbial ecosystems that traditional, single-pathogen tests miss.

Strategically, the fundraise positions Barnwell Bio as a key data infrastructure provider to the $315 billion global poultry market at a time when producers must simultaneously comply with stricter USDA and FDA constraints on routine antibiotic use and manage escalating threats such as Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, which has driven an estimated $14 billion economic impact in the U.S. over 2024–2025. By detecting shifts in barn-level pathogen load before clinical symptoms appear, the company’s system is pitched as a tool for maintaining biosecurity and flock performance without sacrificing profitability, effectively shifting producers from reactive disease response to proactive risk management. Co-founders and scientific leadership emphasize that their platform focuses on the “complete health story” of a barn, using metagenomic and microbiome intelligence to flag potential crises weeks in advance. Barnwell Bio is already gaining commercial traction through collaborations with Mississippi State University, West Liberty Foods, Vital Farms, and other partners, and is actively marketing its capabilities to industry stakeholders, including through a presence at the International Production & Processing Expo in Atlanta. For executives, the key implication is that Barnwell Bio is building a scalable, data-rich layer that could become foundational to future poultry and broader livestock health management, with potential to reduce disease-related losses, support compliance, and improve predictability of production economics.