baCta, a startup making biosynthetic carbon-negative natural rubber produced using engineered microorganisms and renewable feedstocks, has successfully raised €3.3 millions in pre-seed funding. The round was led by OVNI Capital, and with participation from Kima Ventures, Sharpstone Capital, another.vc and prominent business angels such as Thibaud Elziere and members of the Hexa team and Nicolas Morin, co-founder of Gourmey.
The startup is advised by world-renowned scientists such as Pr. Ariel Lindner (INSERM, Université Paris Cité), Pr. Pablo Nikel (DTU University) and Dr. Steffen Lindner-Mehlich (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin), along with experienced biotech founders, such as Dan Windmaier, founder of Bolt Threads (Nasdaq:BSLK).
Natural rubber, a 40 billion dollar market, is a critical raw material. Half of the world’s supply is derived from the petrochemical industry, and the other half from Hevea rubber trees, which are threatened by climate change and whose cultivation causes massive deforestation.
Launched in January 2024 by Mathieu Nohet (previously founder of Manty), Marie Rouquette (previously Sr Project Manager at Eligo Bioscience) and Selcuk Aslan (previously Team Lead at Neoplants), baCta produces high-quality, carbon-negative natural rubber using genetically engineered microorganisms and renewable feedstocks.
baCta’s breakthrough technology leverages a synthetic organelles platform developed at INSERM, along with the ability to diversify sources of feedstock to decrease cost and obtain a negative carbon footprint. They also take advantage of the latest advances in lab automation, AI and protein modeling to collect proprietary data at an unprecedented pace, and process it to model organisms and bioreactors, enabling industrial bio-production.
“This funding marks a significant step forward in our mission to decarbonize the rubber industry,” said Mathieu Nohet Founder and CEO of baCta. “It is a crucial raw material, present everywhere in our daily lives, for which we don’t have a clean alternative. We are excited to partner with investors who share our commitment to sustainable abundance and our vision of microbes as programmable molecular factories.”
The company obtained a proof of concept in bacteria, and now aims at manufacturing the first prototypes in collaboration with leading companies in fashion and industry. The next milestone is to engineer a microbial strain capable of producing high-quality natural rubber at a pilot scale, before building a pre-industrial demonstrator.
The funds will be used to fund research, expand the team, with scientists from top-tier universities and biotech companies already hired, and increase production capabilities.
The company is currently focused on natural rubber, but has a bigger objective in the long run: building a platform to produce carbon-negative isoprenoids, which represent a large chunk of the petro-chemical industry.
“Western economies have been overly dependent on other countries for strategic materials, which exposes vulnerabilities in our industrial supply chain. Synthetic Biology offers a promising solution for creating sustainable and abundant resources,” said Augustin Sayer, OVNI Capital.
“We are excited to invest in baCta because of their outstanding team, which uniquely combines strong ambition, commitment to sustainability, along with complementary skills in synthetic biology, entrepreneurship, and industrialization. Producing isoprenoids profitably in E. coli is a breakthrough with immense industrial and environmental potential,” added Falk Haurenherm, another.vc.
