Berlin-based Cambrium, a synthetic biology startup, announced on Tuesday, October 31, that it has secured €8M in a seed round of funding led by Essential Capital, with participation from SNR, Valor Equity Partners, and HOF Capital.
The company has raised €11M, with previous funding from Merantix.
The announcement comes eight months after launching NovaColl, the first micro-molecular & 100 per cent skin-identical collagen designed for premium personal care formulations.
Fund utilisation
The German company says it will use the funds to translate the early successes of NovaColl into lasting impact as Cambrium’s manufacturing and commercial activities scale towards a full replacement of traditional animal-derived collagen.
The German company plans to use the funds to ensure the long-term success of NovaColl and scale its manufacturing and commercial activities for animal-free collagen production.
The capital infusion will also accelerate the company’s product pipeline, with molecules for new applications and industries to be launched within the next two years.
“We founded Cambrium to accelerate past nature’s innovation cycle for novel molecules that can quickly scale to material impact,” says Duffy. “I’m proud that we have been able to generate meaningful revenue with a bio industrial ingredient at such an early, pre-seed stage and that we’ve won support from the right investors for our next growth stage.”
Cambrium: Accelerating shift towards bio-based economy
Led by Mitchell Duffy, Cambrium‘s mission is to accelerate the shift towards a bio-based economy using its molecular design technology.
The company designs, scales, and manufactures novel, high-performance molecular building blocks for use in personal care, fashion, and beyond.
The Berlin-based company uses a technology platform combining biology and machine learning to create molecules with novel and unseen functionalities.
Using a highly data-driven and automated approach, the company commercialised its first molecule in less than two years.
The company’s NovaColl has been scientifically validated in third-party in vitro studies, which demonstrated a broad range of activities working to protect, maintain, and enhance native collagen holistically.
What the investor has to say?
“The marriage of synthetic biology and AI is rewriting the playbook for molecular innovation,” says Ron Zori at Essential Capital, which led the funding round.
“Cambrium is leading the way in this broader shift to reinvent the building blocks of industry, one molecule at a time. We believe their computational biology platform, as demonstrated by the rapid development and launch of NovaColl, can repeatedly translate scientific innovation into high-performance, sustainable molecules supporting a variety of sectors, and we’re thrilled to be part of this journey,” adds Zori.
Read the orginal article: https://siliconcanals.com/news/startups/germanys-cambrium-bags-8m/
