Objective Biotechnology, Inc.

Objective Biotechnology, Inc., a minority-owned biotechnology manufacturer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, operates as a prime contractor and federal grant recipient developing computer-vision-guided automated microinjection robots and gene-drive technology for life sciences research. The company competes full-and-open across its federal footprint — no set-asides appear in recent awards — with work spanning both NIH grants and DARPA prototype agreements. Objective Biotechnology is a University of Minnesota spin-out; the company's federal posture is early-stage, with six total awards dating to September 2024 and a combined potential value of $833 thousand against $3.1 million in obligated dollars.

The customer base splits between the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. NIH accounts for five awards: three grants from the Office of the Director (two grant programs under CFDA 93.351, Research Infrastructure Programs) and two purchase orders from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute. DARPA placed one award. The DARPA contract carries the highest potential value — a $682,454 Other Transaction Agreement (OTA) issued February 20, 2026, for development of next-generation CRISPR gene drives targeting invasive fly species, with performance running through November 19, 2026. The two NHLBI purchase orders, each for a computer-vision-guided automated microinjection robot, total $151 thousand in combined potential value across awards from September 2024 and September 2026.

On the grant side, Objective Biotechnology received an $803,099 Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I award from the NIH Office of the Director in September 2025 to develop the mini-mscope, a 3.8-gram miniaturized imaging device for mesoscale cortex-wide neural activity measurement in freely behaving mice, with performance through August 31, 2027. The company also holds two SBIR Phase awards — one Phase I (September 2024) and one Phase II (also September 2024, running through July 2029) — both from the NIH Office of the Director, for machine-vision-guided microinjection robotics targeting Drosophila transgenesis. These grants address automation of manual microinjection procedures; the Phase II award aims to engineer a fully autonomous microinjection robot for commercial dissemination.

Three awards (combined potential value $758 thousand) complete within the next twenty-four months and face recompete exposure. The company has not subcontracted on federal awards; all six awards reflect prime work. Federal activity has trended upward through 2024, dipped in 2025, and resumed in 2026. Objective Biotechnology's federal footprint remains narrow — two agencies — and concentrated in NIH research infrastructure and DARPA prototype development rather than sustained production or service-delivery vehicles.