The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allocated up to €25 million to launch a new initiative called Upscalator, designed to help early-stage Danish and European biosolutions startups scale their technologies toward market readiness and support the green transition. The program will be led by the BioInnovation Institute (BII), a life sciences and deep-tech innovation institute based in Copenhagen.
BII and the foundation are positioning Upscalator as a response to growing economic and employment expectations for biosolutions. The initiative is framed around projections that the global economic footprint of biosolutions production could nearly double by 2035 to roughly 778 billion euros and create more than 5 million jobs, with Denmark expected to see meaningful job support across areas like agriculture, food, and biochemicals.
Backers of the program say the bottleneck is not the quality of early science, but the ability to scale. BII cites feedback from 23 biosolutions companies it has supported through its acceleration and company-creation programs, noting two recurring hurdles: limited knowledge of how to scale up and insufficient funding to pay for services and expertise typically provided by contract development and manufacturing organizations.
Upscalator will combine funding, infrastructure, and specialized expertise to shorten the path from development to real-world application. The initiative will be organized around five elements: an advisory function; a process design unit supported by a small-scale process lab; a network of service providers; a funding vehicle focused on upscaling; and a community to connect participating companies.
BII’s broader track record was cited as part of the rationale for selecting the institute to lead the program. The institute has supported more than 130 startups, which have collectively raised more than 1 billion euros in external funding, and it is based in Innovation District Copenhagen.
To lead Upscalator’s day-to-day activities, BII has hired Jette Thykær as director. She brings industry experience from Novo Nordisk and an academic background, including service as an associate professor of fermentation technology at DTU.
Upscalator is scheduled to run in two three-year periods, from Q1 2026 to Q1 2029 and from Q1 2029 to Q2 2032.
KEY QUOTES
“Biosolutions have been hailed as the next new Danish super sector – but if we are to fulfill our ambitions, strategic investments 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 biosolutions startups from all of Europe by providing access to facilities and expertise to scale up their solutions,”
“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,”
Jens Nielsen, Chief Executive Officer, BioInnovation Institute (BII)
“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,”
Mikkel Skovborg, Vice President Of Innovation, Novo Nordisk Foundation
