Biomatter Raises $18 Million in Oversubscribed Series A to Expand AI-Powered Enzyme Design and Accelerate Industrial Applications
Biomatter, a biotechnology company specializing in custom enzyme design, has announced the successful closing of an oversubscribed $18 million Series A financing round. The investment was led by Astanor, with participation from existing investors UVC Partners, Inventure, and Metaplanet. The funding will support the company’s efforts to scale its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered enzyme engineering platform, expand its research and development infrastructure, and accelerate the delivery of customized enzymes to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and industrial customers worldwide.
The financing represents an important milestone in Biomatter’s growth as it works to transform how enzymes are designed, developed, and incorporated into commercial products. By combining computational biology, advanced AI models, and experimental laboratory validation, the company aims to reduce the time and complexity traditionally associated with enzyme development. Its technology enables the design of enzymes tailored to specific chemical reactions and industrial requirements, including applications for which naturally occurring enzymes may not provide suitable solutions.
A significant portion of the new investment will be directed toward establishing a 2,000-square-meter facility in Vilnius, Lithuania, equivalent to approximately 21,500 square feet. The facility is expected to open in 2027 and will expand Biomatter’s in-house design, development, and testing capabilities. By bringing more stages of enzyme engineering and experimental validation under one roof, the company intends to accelerate its development timelines and strengthen its ability to serve a growing international customer base.
Expanding AI-Powered Enzyme Engineering Capabilities
Enzymes play an essential role across numerous industries, including pharmaceutical manufacturing, molecular biology, diagnostics, agriculture, food production, and industrial biotechnology. These biological catalysts enable chemical reactions to occur more efficiently and under conditions that may otherwise require substantial energy, expensive chemicals, or complex manufacturing processes.
Despite their importance, developing enzymes with specific performance characteristics has traditionally been a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. Conventional enzyme engineering often involves identifying naturally occurring enzymes, modifying their amino acid sequences, conducting repeated laboratory experiments, and evaluating whether the resulting candidates meet the desired performance requirements. Such development programs can take several months or even years.
Biomatter is seeking to overcome these limitations through an AI-driven approach that starts with the chemical reaction a customer wants to achieve rather than relying exclusively on existing natural enzymes as the starting point.
The company’s computational platform analyzes the chemistry and functional requirements of a target reaction to design enzymes with the necessary properties. This strategy allows Biomatter to explore enzyme sequences and structures beyond those commonly found in nature, potentially enabling solutions for chemical transformations that naturally occurring biological systems do not perform.
According to the company, its development programs can already be completed within weeks, compared with the months or years frequently required by conventional approaches. With the planned Vilnius facility, Biomatter aims to reduce these timelines further, with the long-term objective of moving certain enzyme design and testing programs from weeks to days.
The new infrastructure will strengthen the connection between computational design and laboratory experimentation. This integrated approach is expected to help researchers evaluate enzyme candidates more efficiently, generate additional experimental data, and improve the accuracy of future designs.
Enzymes Already Incorporated Into Commercial Products
Biomatter’s technology has progressed beyond early-stage research and development, with its custom-designed enzymes already being incorporated into commercially available products.
One notable example involves its collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific on the Invitrogen SuperScript V Reverse Transcriptase enzyme. This enzyme is used in molecular biology laboratories to convert RNA into complementary DNA, supporting a variety of applications in molecular research and mRNA-related workflows.
Through its collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific, Biomatter helped improve the enzyme’s resistance to oxidation. Oxidation resistance is an important characteristic for maintaining reagent stability during transportation, storage, and routine laboratory use.
The improvement contributes to product stability requirements that support ambient-temperature shipping and room-temperature storage for periods of up to six months. These characteristics can offer practical advantages for manufacturers, distributors, laboratories, and researchers by reducing dependence on stringent cold-chain logistics.
The collaboration demonstrates how computationally designed enzymes can address specific product-development challenges and deliver practical benefits in established commercial markets.
For Biomatter, the commercial application of its technology also provides evidence that AI-powered enzyme engineering can move from computational predictions into validated products used by customers.
Developing Enzymes Beyond Natural Biological Limitations
A central element of Biomatter’s approach is its proprietary enzyme dataset, which has been developed through years of research and experimental data generation.
Many conventional enzyme-design approaches rely heavily on naturally occurring biological sequences and structures. Although these datasets provide valuable information about enzyme function and evolution, they can also limit the range of solutions explored by computational models.
Biomatter has taken a different approach by generating its own experimental enzyme data, including designs that extend beyond naturally occurring biological examples. This proprietary information supports its AI models in exploring substantial variations in enzyme sequences and structures.
The company believes this capability is particularly important for developing enzymes that perform chemical reactions not commonly found in nature.
One example involves the development of a methylase designed for mRNA vaccine manufacturing. The enzyme was engineered to function without S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM), an expensive additive required by naturally occurring methylases.
SAM is commonly involved in biological methylation reactions, in which methyl groups are transferred to target molecules. By designing a methylase that can operate without this conventional additive, Biomatter demonstrated the potential to develop enzymes with capabilities that differ significantly from their natural counterparts.
This achievement illustrates the company’s broader strategy of designing enzymes around the chemistry and requirements of a specific application rather than simply improving the performance of an existing natural enzyme.
Importantly, Biomatter does not rely solely on computational predictions when delivering customized enzymes. Each design undergoes laboratory testing before being provided to customers. Experimental validation helps establish whether the enzyme performs as intended and provides additional information that can be incorporated into the company’s proprietary dataset.
As more enzymes are designed and experimentally characterized, the company expects its platform to become increasingly capable of delivering accurate and efficient solutions for future development programs.
Growing Customer Base Across Multiple Industries
Biomatter has delivered more than 50 custom-designed enzymes to over 25 enterprise customers across Europe, the United States, and Japan.
Its customer portfolio includes major organizations such as AstraZeneca, BASF, Kirin Holdings, Neogen, Sanofi, and Tereos. These collaborations span several sectors, including biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics, agriculture, food production, and industrial biotechnology.
The diversity of its customer base highlights the potential applications of custom enzyme engineering across different industrial environments.
In biopharmaceutical manufacturing, enzymes can support the development and production of complex biological products, improve reaction efficiency, and address challenges associated with molecular processing. In diagnostics and molecular biology, customized enzymes can help improve the performance, stability, and reliability of laboratory reagents.
Agricultural and industrial biotechnology companies can also benefit from enzymes designed to improve manufacturing processes, optimize chemical transformations, and support more efficient production methods.
Biomatter has also reported that several customer relationships have expanded from individual development projects into multi-year collaborations involving multiple enzymes. This development reflects growing demand for customized enzyme solutions and suggests that customers are increasingly considering computational enzyme design as part of their longer-term product development strategies.
Every completed project also contributes additional experimental information to Biomatter’s proprietary dataset. This creates a reinforcing development cycle in which customer projects generate new data, the data improves the computational platform, and improved models support faster and more accurate enzyme development.
New Investment to Support Infrastructure and International Expansion
The $18 million Series A financing will support several strategic priorities beyond the construction of the new Vilnius facility.
One major focus will be expanding Biomatter’s commercial organization and strengthening its presence in the United States. Approximately half of the company’s customers are currently based in the U.S., making the market an important part of its international growth strategy.
Additional commercial resources will help Biomatter build relationships with pharmaceutical manufacturers, biotechnology companies, diagnostics developers, and industrial organizations seeking customized enzyme solutions.
The company also plans to continue investing in its computational platform and the proprietary experimental dataset that supports its AI models. Improvements in these areas are expected to strengthen its ability to develop enzymes for increasingly complex chemical reactions and expand the range of applications it can address.
The planned facility will provide additional capacity for enzyme design, testing, and validation. By integrating more experimental work into its operations, Biomatter expects to improve coordination between computational scientists and laboratory researchers while reducing delays associated with external testing arrangements.
The investment will therefore support both the company’s immediate operational requirements and its longer-term objective of making custom enzyme development more accessible to industrial customers.
Investors Highlight Commercial Potential of AI-Designed Enzymes
Investors participating in the financing emphasized Biomatter’s ability to translate AI-powered enzyme design into commercially relevant applications.
Laurynas Karpus, CEO and co-founder of Biomatter, said the company’s objective is to make customized enzymes as accessible as standard catalog products, including for chemical reactions for which suitable enzyme solutions do not currently exist.
He explained that the new financing will enable Biomatter to design enzymes from the underlying chemistry at a significantly greater scale and help customers incorporate those enzymes into commercial products more quickly.
Oliver Schoppe, Partner at UVC Partners, highlighted the growing transition of AI from software applications into physical industries, particularly biology. He noted that while many companies developing AI technologies for biological applications are still demonstrating their capabilities, Biomatter has already achieved commercial adoption.
According to Schoppe, the company’s enzymes are being used in products supplied by major manufacturers across Europe and the United States. UVC Partners’ increased investment in the financing round reflects its confidence in Biomatter’s commercial progress and future growth opportunities.
Harry Briggs, Partner at Astanor, also emphasized the importance of enzyme technology in food production and biomanufacturing. He noted that enzymes support industries representing hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity, but their development has historically been constrained by lengthy trial-and-error processes.
Briggs identified access to suitable data as one of the major limitations facing conventional enzyme engineering. He highlighted Biomatter’s investment in generating experimental data beyond naturally occurring biological systems as a significant differentiator that enables the company to design enzymes that have never evolved in nature.
He also pointed to the company’s established relationships with major customers and repeat business across multiple industries as evidence of its commercial potential.
Strengthening the Future of Industrial Biotechnology
The successful completion of its $18 million Series A financing positions Biomatter to expand its technology, infrastructure, and international commercial operations.
The planned Vilnius facility, expected to open in 2027, will be an important component of this expansion, enabling the company to bring more enzyme design and experimental testing activities in-house. Combined with continued investment in its AI platform and proprietary dataset, the facility is expected to support faster development cycles and greater capacity for customized enzyme programs.
With more than 50 enzymes delivered to over 25 enterprise customers, Biomatter has established an initial commercial foundation across pharmaceutical, diagnostic, agricultural, and industrial biotechnology markets.
As demand grows for more efficient and specialized biological manufacturing technologies, the company aims to address limitations associated with conventional enzyme development and expand the availability of customized biological catalysts.
By combining AI-driven design, proprietary experimental data, and laboratory validation, Biomatter is working toward a model in which customers can access application-specific enzymes with greater speed and flexibility. Its latest financing represents a significant step toward scaling that model and advancing the role of computational enzyme engineering in global industrial applications.
About Biomatter
Biomatter is the custom enzyme design company delivering catalysts that solve real-world problems across industries. Founded in 2018, Biomatter designs novel, high-performance enzymes from the chemistry up and delivers them to partners in biopharma, diagnostics, agriculture, and industrial biotech. The company has delivered more than 50 custom enzymes to more than 25 enterprise customers. Biomatter’s founders published one of the first demonstrations that generative models can produce functional enzymes far from anything found in nature (Nature Machine Intelligence, 2021). Discover more at biomatter.com.
About Astanor
Astanor is a global investment firm focused on seed through growth stage businesses addressing human and planetary health using agrifood technology as the biggest lever. Founded in 2017, Astanor counts circa 50 investments to date in Europe, North America, and beyond. Astanor’s mission is to invest in and support visionary entrepreneurs and management teams building scalable solutions for the transition to regenerative agriculture, sustainable food production, resilient supply chains, and restored metabolic health. For more information, please visit Astanor.
About UVC Partners
UVC Partners backs Europe’s most ambitious B2B tech founders building new category leaders. From DeepTech to AI, the firm has invested in breakout startups including Isar Aerospace, Proxima Fusion, Q.ANT, Aleph Alpha, Tacto, Flix, and FINN. With more than €800 million in assets under management, UVC Partners invests up to €10 million initially across multiple stages from early to growth.
Over the lifetime of the investment, €40 million per company can be deployed. Beyond capital, UVC Partners’ investment team is a “tech team for tech teams”— supporting founders in building and scaling market-leading companies. Through its unique access to UnternehmerTUM, Europe’s leading innovation hub, the VC offers a powerful ecosystem of entrepreneurs, key corporate decision-makers, and top-tier researchers. UVC Partners’ value-creation team provides direct access to a network of 1,000+ companies—potential customers and strategic partners.