Synonym rebrands as Roebling to expand industrial infrastructure planning platform

Synonym has rebranded as Roebling, marking a shift toward building a broader industrial infrastructure planning platform that extends beyond biomanufacturing into multiple process-heavy sectors.

• Synonym has rebranded as Roebling, reflecting a broader focus on industrial infrastructure planning.

• The company has developed software tools for techno-economic analysis, early process design and cost estimation.

• Roebling has targeted industries including biomanufacturing, food and agriculture, chemicals, critical minerals and energy.

The rebrand was announced on 5 February by Edward Shenderovich, Founder & Chief Executive, who said the company was building “an entirely new way to plan and develop industrial infrastructure”.

Synonym was founded four years ago by Shenderovich and Joshua Lachter to support the development of biomanufacturing infrastructure. The company has worked with customers ranging from startups and large corporations to US government agencies, delivering productized techno-economic analyses designed to support factory planning, cost modeling and scale-up decisions.

“We ended up working with customers from startups to Fortune 500 companies, to the Department of Energy and the Department of War, to deliver productized techno-economic analyses – roadmaps for understanding product economics, building factories, and getting to profitable production at scale,” Shenderovich said.

In 2024, the US Department of Commerce awarded Synonym and its partner Primient a US$16 million grant to redevelop a facility at Primient’s Decatur campus. The iPROOF facility was described by the company as a demo-scale biomanufacturing facility.

Shenderovich said much of Synonym’s earlier work relied on manual modeling, including spreadsheet-based analysis that required hundreds of hours per project. He said the lack of integrated tools limited the speed and flexibility of infrastructure planning.

“We also realized the problems of siloed systems and incomplete models go far beyond biomanufacturing,” he said, adding that infrastructure development across sectors required new analytical approaches as manufacturing systems evolved.

As part of the transition, Brentan Alexander, who joined Synonym early in its development, has been named co-founder and chief technology officer of Roebling alongside Shenderovich and Lachter.

Roebling now offers what the company described as a single, connected workspace for early-stage project development, covering techno-economic analysis, early process design and cost estimation. The platform was built as an AI-native environment intended to replace fragmented workflows used by engineers, project developers and financial analysts.

According to the company, Roebling supports decision-making across industries including biomanufacturing, food and agriculture, critical minerals, chemicals and energy.

The new name referenced the Roebling family, known for their role in designing and building the Brooklyn Bridge in the 19th century. Shenderovich said the company viewed the project as an example of engineering ambition and large-scale infrastructure delivery.

“We hope Roebling will now continue that legacy and become an important piece of a new industrial age,” he said.

Roebling is exhibiting at The Future of Protein Production Chicago on February 24-25, where the company is located at stand S3. Joshua Lachter, Co-founder, is also speaking as part of the event’s Startup Symposium.