baCta is a startup that has developed biosynthetic carbon-negative natural rubber, from engineered microorganisms, and renewable feedstocks. Today, the startup announced raising €3.3 million in pre-seed funding, led by OVNI Capital, alongside Kima Ventures, Sharpstone Capital, another.vc and business angels such as Thibaud Elziere and Hexa team members.
To advise the company, the company turns to famous world scientists, such as Ariel Lindner of INSERM at Université Paris Cité, Pablo Nikel at DTU University, and Steffen Lindner-Mehlich, M.D.
Now, natural rubber is an essential raw material; the market is worth $40 billion. Of this amount, one half comes from the petrochemicals industry, and the other half comes from the Hevea rubber tree, threatened by climate change and which requires massive deforestation to grow.
Co-founded in January 2024 by Mathieu Nohet, a co-founder of Manty; Marie Rouquette, formerly Sr Project Manager at Eligo Bioscience; and Selcuk Aslan, Team Lead at Neoplants, baCta uses genetically modified microbes and renewable feedstocks are used to produce high-quality carbon-negative natural rubber.
This breakthrough technology is based on a platform for synthetic organelles developed in INSERM but also diversified sources of feedstock, in order to decrease the costs and obtain a negative carbon footprint. It further makes use of the latest advancements in lab automation, AI, and protein modeling to collect proprietary data at a pace unprecedented, process it and model organisms and bioreactors thus enabling industrial bio-production.
“This investment takes a huge leap forward in our pursuit of decarbonizing the rubber industry,” said Mathieu Nohet, baCta’s founder and CEO. We are delighted to collaborate with investors who embody our dedication to sustainable abundance and our vision for microbes as programmable molecular factories.”
The company made it to proof of concept on bacteria and is now collaborating with leaders in the fashion and industry sectors to manufacture the first prototypes. The next milestone plans for the engineering of a microbial strain capable of yielding high-quality natural rubber at a pilot scale before building a pre-industrial demonstrator.
The money will go to research, building the team-the company has already hired some scientists from top-tier universities and biotech companies-and increasing production capabilities.
For now, the company focuses on natural rubber, but in the long run, it has a much bigger goal: building a platform to produce carbon-negative isoprenoids, which represent a good chunk of the petro-chemical industry.
