War Department Commits $80 Million Loan to Antheia
U.S. Department of Defense
The Department of War’s Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) announced today an $80 million conditional loan commitment with Antheia, Inc. to scale the company’s domestic production of key starting materials (KSM) and active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) for generic pharmaceutical drugs. The OSC investment, alongside additional private capital, is intended to support Antheia’s domestic biomanufacturing efforts to secure critical medicine supply chains.
Today, the vast majority of KSMs and APIs are manufactured outside the United States. OSC’s conditional loan commitment to Antheia would help address this reliance on foreign production while directly advancing President Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 13944, Ensuring Essential Medicines, Medical Countermeasures, and Critical Inputs Are Made in the United States. Antheia specializes in using bioengineered yeast to convert sugar directly into KSMs and APIs in a one-step fermentation process. The company’s U.S. manufacturing operations would onshore production of essential medicines and enable the rapid repurposing of manufacturing capacity to address sudden changes in demand.
“Antheia’s biosynthesis platform represents an innovative method to establish cost-effective domestic supply chains which enable to the United States to compete globally. We are pleased to support Antheia’s domestic biomanufacturing, which would represent an important step in strengthening the essential medicines supply chain in the United States,” said David A. Lorch, Director of the Office of Strategic Capital and Senior Advisor to Deputy Secretary of War Steve Feinberg.
Due to a lack of available and adequate domestic manufacturing capacity, Antheia currently produces its pipeline of KSMs and APIs with contract manufacturing partners abroad. OSC’s conditional financing would enable Antheia to establish its U.S. manufacturing operations, onshore essential medicine supply chains, and ultimately reduce the risk of essential medicine shortages.
“OSC’s investment in Antheia represents an exciting opportunity to establish domestic supply chains for the production of KSMs and APIs that are critical to our most important pharmaceuticals,” said Akshaya Trivedi, Managing Director (Investments) with OSC.
The conditional loan commitment specifies additional steps Antheia must complete before financial close, including satisfying various financial, legal, technical, investment, due diligence, and other requirements.
“I applaud the Office of Strategic Capital on this important conditional investment which advances the onshoring of pharmaceutical supply chains. Biomanufacturing is one of the Department of War’s six critical technology areas, making domestic production an imperative,” said Emil Michael, Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering.
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