Bristol-based Uplift360, an advanced materials startup innovating how aerospace, defence and industrial sectors recover and reuse high-value composite waste, announced today the successful close of its €7.4 million Seed funding round.
The round was led by Extantia, with significant contributions from the NATO Innovation Fund (NIF), Promus Ventures and Fund F.
Sam Staincliffe, CEO and co-founder of Uplift360, said: “This investment is a clear signal that Europe intends to lead in sustainable advanced-materials manufacturing. Our technology turns what is currently burned, buried or exported into a reliable, high-quality feedstock stream, strengthening supply-chains for primes, OEMs and government customers. With Extantia and the NATO Innovation Fund behind us, we’re now positioned to scale with urgency.”
Uplift360’s Seed round can be situated within a wider flow of capital into circular and advanced-materials innovation.
In France, climate-focused investor SlateVC announced a €132 million first close for its inaugural growth fund in 2026, with a mandate spanning low-carbon industrial processes and materials.
Germany has seen several adjacent investments, including aevoloop, which raised around €8 million in 2025 to scale chemically recyclable and biodegradable plastics, and Cologne-based METYCLE, which secured €14 million to expand its AI-driven metal recycling platform.
In the Baltics, Estonia’s Jälle Technologies raised €2 million pre-Seed to recover high-value carbon materials from end-of-life batteries, while at the ecosystem level France-based makesense launched a €15 million Seed fund dedicated to circular and inclusive ventures across Europe.
Taken together, these announcements point to roughly €170 million or more in disclosed funding and fund capital moving through European circular-materials and industrial recycling segments over the past two years.
Within this context, Uplift360’s Seed round represents a UK-based contribution to the same trend, aligning composite regeneration and supply-chain resilience with a broader European push to retain strategic materials in use rather than down-cycling or exporting them as waste.
Joern-Carlos Kuntze, Partner at Extantia, said: “High-performance composites underpin strategic sectors critical to Europe’s reindustrialisation, yet remain notoriously difficult to recycle. Uplift360 is changing that: transforming end-of-life materials into high-quality feedstock while building resilient circular supply chains in the process. We’re proud to back Sam, Jamie, and the team as they build the circular backbone of the composites industry.
Founded in 2021, Uplift360 is developing chemical regeneration technologies for critical industrial materials such as carbon fibre and aramid. Their vision is to lead the way in circular economy innovation, creating a future where advanced materials are never wasted.
Advanced materials like carbon fibre and aramids underpin defence, aerospace and manufacturing and are critical to Europe’s ability to revitalise industrial capabilities more broadly. However, Uplift360 explains that these materials currently face severe supply-chain bottlenecks due to geopolitical pressure and limited virgin fibre availability and, as they are built to last, contribute to a fast-growing global waste stream.
Uplift360 aims to address this challenge through its proprietary technology, a chemical process that recovers advanced composite materials, resulting in the same quality output as inputted.
Unlike recycling, Uplift360’s regeneration process is non-degenerative, giving them a true second life.
Sander Verbrugge, Partner at the NATO Innovation Fund, says: “Durable, high-quality advanced materials are of strategic importance to securing the future of NATO nations. Uplift360’s platform is exactly the kind of dual-use innovation Europe needs – tackling a real supply-chain vulnerability, reducing carbon emissions and bolstering the resilience of the sectors that underpin European industrialisation and competitiveness.”
Today’s Seed funding will scale Uplift360’s proprietary technologies, enabling the regeneration of hard-to-treat advanced composite materials such as carbon fibre, aramid (e.g., Kevlar) and hybrid laminates from aerospace, defence, wind energy and high-performance automotive sectors
This financing enables Uplift360 to:
- Commission its first pilot-scale processing line in the UK in 2026 to enable higher volumes, real-world validation, and customer integration
Expand partnerships with major aerospace, defence, automotive and energy OEMs
Increase R&D into regenerated-fibre performance enhancement and new applications
Build a distributed, scalable model for composite circularity across Europe
Uplift360 already works with industrial partners such as Babcock on Eurofighter Typhoon end-of-life materials recovery, Leonardo on turning Merlin helicopter blades into UxV components, and a project with Rolls-Royce.
As part of Europe’s growing ecosystem of dual-use and strategic-materials innovators with a strong presence in both the UK and Luxembourg, Uplift360 is well-positioned to secure and strengthen supply chains across Europe.
Read the orginal article: https://www.eu-startups.com/2026/02/with-rolls-royce-collaboration-in-place-uplift360-secures-e7-4-million-to-target-composite-supply-chain-resilience/
