Biomatter has raised $18 million in an oversubscribed Series A round to expand its artificial intelligence-powered enzyme design platform, commercial organization, and U.S. presence. Astanor led the financing, with participation from existing investors UVC Partners, Inventure, and Metaplanet.
Biomatter designs custom enzymes for biopharmaceutical, diagnostic, agricultural, and industrial biotechnology applications. It has delivered more than 50 enzymes to over 25 enterprise customers across Europe, the U.S., and Japan.
Customers include AstraZeneca, BASF, Kirin Holdings, Neogen, Sanofi, and Tereos. Several relationships have expanded from individual projects into multiyear programs covering multiple enzymes.
Biomatter’s technology is already used in commercial products. The company helped improve the oxidation resistance of an enzyme used in Thermo Fisher Scientific’s SuperScript V Reverse Transcriptase product, supporting ambient shipping and room-temperature storage for as long as six months.
Rather than beginning with a naturally occurring enzyme, Biomatter designs from the chemical reaction a customer needs. Its proprietary experimental data allows generative models to explore protein sequences and structures beyond those found in nature.
One program produced a methylase for messenger RNA vaccine manufacturing that operates without S-adenosyl methionine, an expensive additive required by natural methylases.
The funding will support a 2,000-square-meter design and testing facility in Vilnius scheduled to open in 2027. Bringing more testing in-house is intended to shorten development cycles from weeks to days.
Biomatter will also expand its commercial team, computational platform, enzyme dataset, and U.S. operations, where approximately half its customers are based.
KEY QUOTES:
“Our goal is to make a custom enzyme as easy to order as a catalog product, including for reactions that don’t have one today.”
Laurynas Karpus, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Biomatter
“Biomatter has spent years generating data beyond nature, which allows them to design enzymes that never evolved.”
Harry Briggs, Partner at Astanor
