The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allocated up to €25 million for the BioInnovation Institute (BII) to launch a new initiative, ‘Upscalator’, to support Danish and European early-stage startups with facilities, services, and expertise to support that novel biosolutions reach the market and can drive the green transition.
The BII is a life science and DeepTech innovation institute in Copenhagen. Through their programmes, Venture Lab, Bio Studio and BII Quantum Lab, they support life science and DeepTech startups with knowledge, network, infrastructure and funding of up to €3 million per project and €1.8 million per startup.
“Biosolutions have been hailed as the next new Danish super sector – but if we are to fulfill our ambitions, strategic initiatives are needed. Thus, we are pleased that BII, with the support of the Novo Nordisk Foundation, can provide a much-needed opportunity to economically support early-stage biosolution startups from all of Europe by providing access to facilities and expertise to scale up their solutions,” says Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII.
Recent activity from 2025–2026 shows steady, but still fragmented, early-stage investment across the European biosolutions and adjacent BioTech landscape.
In Finland, Avenue Biosciences raised €4.8 million to scale a protein engineering platform aimed at improving biologics manufacturing reliability, while Portugal-based PFx Biotech secured €2.5 million to advance precision-fermented human milk proteins. Denmark features prominently, with Copenhagen startups Enduro Genetics (€12 million Series A for scalable bioproduction technologies) and EvodiaBio (€6 million to scale fermentation-based flavour solutions) both attracting growth capital. Sweden-based Melt&Marble also raised around €7 million to develop designer fats using industrial biotechnology approaches.
Collectively, these rounds account for approximately €32 million in disclosed funding and illustrate that while capital is flowing into precision fermentation, protein engineering and synthetic biology, funding is typically targeted at platform development rather than the costly and knowledge-intensive upscaling phase.
Against this backdrop, the BII’s Upscalator initiative, directly addresses a notable gap in the European biosolutions ecosystem by coupling funding with access to facilities and process expertise, particularly relevant given Denmark’s continued concentration of biosolutions startups alongside broader European activity.
“Upscalator is designed to cut time to impact. By bringing funding, infrastructure, and deep biosolutions expertise together in one place, we expect that we can reduce development timelines by up to a year and help new green technologies reach the market faster, where they can make a real difference on the green transition,” adds Jens.
Data provided by the BII paints a clear picture: The global economic footprint of biosolutions production is expected to nearly double by 2035, reaching approximately €778 billion, and to create more than 5 million jobs. In Denmark alone, biosolutions across sectors such as agriculture, food, and biochemicals are expected to support more than 34.000 jobs and significantly drive the green transition and the success of Danish and European biosolutions startups.
However, there is currently a dire need for earmarked financing and tailored guidance for scaling up new solutions. While Denmark historically has a strong global position within biosolutions led by large corporates as Novonesis, Arla, and Carlsberg, the BII says that startups often lack access to knowledge and facilities to successfully upscale their solutions.
Jens further underlines that, based on conversations with the 23 biosolutions companies that BII supported through its acceleration and company creation programmes, a lack of knowledge of how to upscale and the economic ability to afford the services and expertise from Contract Development and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMOs) are mentioned as the key obstacles to bringing new biosolutions to the market.
To address the challenges that biosolutions startups currently face, the Upscalator initiative will be based on five key components:
- An advisory function
- A process design unit with a small-scale process lab for process validation
- A network of service providers
- A funding vehicle to support upscaling
- A strong biosolutions community of like-minded companies and stakeholders
BII’s track record of supporting more than 130 startups – collectively raising over €1 billion in external funding – combined with its strong biosolutions portfolio and central location in Innovation District Copenhagen, was a key reason why the Novo Nordisk Foundation selected BII to lead the Upscalator initiative.
Established in Denmark in 1924, the Novo Nordisk Foundation is an enterprise foundation with philanthropic objectives. Their mission is to progress research and innovation in the prevention and treatment of cardiometabolic and infectious diseases as well as to advance knowledge and solutions to support a green transformation of society.
“The green transition depends on our ability to move promising biosolutions from early development to real-world application. BII has demonstrated a unique capability to support companies at this critical stage, and with Upscalator, we are further strengthening the European biosolutions ecosystem to enable faster scaling, real impact and long-term value creation for society,” says Mikkel Skovborg, Vice President of Innovation, Novo Nordisk Foundation.
To spearhead Upscalator’s activities, Jette Thykær has been hired as a director and will bring industry experience from Novo Nordisk and academic knowledge from her background as an Associate Professor in Fermentation Technology at DTU.
Upscalator will run in two three-year periods from Q1 2026 to Q1 2029 and Q1 2029 to
Q2 2032.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/02/bii-secures-e25-million-in-novo-nordisk-foundation-funding-to-target-early-stage-european-biosolutions-startups/
