Cultivarium

Overview

Cultivarium is a nonprofit research institution based in Boston, MA, focused on expanding the microbial diversity available for scientific study and engineering. A team of five researchers at Harvard spent approximately ten years developing the fastest-growing microbe, reflecting the organization's commitment to foundational biological infrastructure. Cultivarium has characterized 5,600 bacteria across 12 phyla, building datasets and computational tools that underpin a new generation of biological AI models.

Cultivarium has partnered with Medra for lab automation, deploying the Work Cell Armadillo powered by Medra hardware to accelerate experimental throughput. Its open-source and proprietary products span machine learning tools for organism growth prediction and biological world models tracking genetic exchange across vast microbial populations.