Michroma closes $6.4m seed financing round

Precision fermentation ingredient company, Michroma, has closed a $6.4 million seed financing round to bring novel food colouring to market.

The start-up will use the funding to advance the commercialisation of sustainable natural colourants, expand R&D capabilities and broaden its ingredient platform.

Michroma removes petroleum, which is the base ingredient in mainstream colourants, from the food ingredient value chain. The company’s novel approach creates fungal biofactories to produce small molecules, like colours, more efficiently.

The round was led by Supply Change Capital, a food tech venture capital backed by the corporate venture capital arm of General Mills, and was supported by new investor Be8 Ventures, backed by Dr Oetker.

Michroma’s CEO and co-founder, Ricky Cassini, said: “We are poised to meet consumer demand for healthier and more sustainable food without petroleum-based ingredients. Unlike the current generation of unstable natural options, like betalains, carminic acid, and anthocyanins, Michroma is producing better-performing natural colourants powered by fungi. This next stage of our development will help us industrialise our fungal platform and enable the world’s transition to natural colours.”

Mauricio Braia, Michroma’s CSO and co-founder, commented: “We are leveraging the power and versatility of filamentous fungi with our synbio platform. By combining a unique fungal chassis strain with precision fermentation, we are capable of producing high-value complex molecules with high yields previously unseen in the biotech industry.”