Flagship’s Most-Funded Startups, Generate and Tessera, Announce Layoffs in 2025

Tessera, a Flagship-backed biotech specializing in gene writing, announced layoffs effective August 22, 2025, impacting some of its 338 full-time employees. This follows a previous cut of 13-14% of its workforce (about 50 employees) in August 2024 as the company prioritized clinical development resources.2

Generate:
Biomedicines, another leading Flagship-founded company, is reducing its workforce by 10%, affecting approximately 33 of its 333 staff. The company described the move as 'purposefully balancing' its resources to maintain technological leadership and support its progressing portfolio. The timing and details of impacted sites remain unclear.2

These layoffs occur amidst a wider 2025 trend of job reductions in tech and biotech sectors, attributed to repositioning for innovation, evolving portfolio needs, or capital reallocation—frequently tied to increased investments in AI and automation.13

Sources:

1. https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/16/tech-layoffs-2025-list/

2. https://www.biospace.com/biospace-layoff-tracker

3. https://fortune.com/2025/07/16/tech-layoffs-2025-how-microsoft-google-meta-amazon/