Melt&Marble raises €7.3M Series A to scale precision fermented designer fats

Melt&Marble, a Swedish biotech firm developing so called designer fats through precision fermentation, has raised a €7.3 million Series A round, reported on 8 December 2025. The round was led by Industrifonden and included the European Commission’s EIC Fund, strategic partners Beiersdorf and Valio, plus Chalmers Ventures and Catalyze Capital. The company says the fresh equity plus earlier European Innovation Council support of about €2.5 million brings the recent fundraising to roughly €10 million over the past year.

What the money is for and immediate plans

Melt&Marble says the funding will move the company from demo scale to market readiness. The immediate aim is to launch the first ingredients in personal care applications in 2026. Production volumes will be procured through an existing commercial manufacturing partner, a strategy the company markets as capex light. Melt&Marble is also preparing for food market entry in the United States and is pursuing co development and distribution discussions with strategic partners in Europe and beyond.

How Melt&Marble’s technology works

The company frames the product as addressing three commercial pain points. First, conventional fats such as palm and coconut carry environmental and deforestation concerns and are sourced from geographically concentrated supply chains. Second, functionality limitations of commodity fats can hamper formulation in food and cosmetics. Third, brand demand for traceability and sustainability is increasing across both sectors.

Claims, market size and investor endorsements

Melt&Marble and its investors point to a market opportunity of more than $100 billion across personal care, beauty, meat and dairy alternatives, confectionery, bakery and specialised nutrition. The company argues that engineered fats can deliver superior texture and mouthfeel in food and enhanced skin feel and bio activity in cosmetics while avoiding animal derived inputs.

Investors emphasised both the technical progress and the commercial runway. Industrifonden’s Senior Investment Director Tobias Elmquist described Melt&Marble as technically and commercially mature for its stage. The EIC Fund chair Svetoslava Georgieva framed the investment as validation of precision fermentation for sustainable, high performance ingredients.

Commercial and regulatory pathway

What remains uncertain and the risks ahead

Precision fermentation for lipids is technically plausible but the leap from pilot or demo scale to cost competitive industrial supply is significant. Key open questions include fermentation yields, downstream processing costs, overall cost per kilogram at commercial volumes, and the sourcing and sustainability of the feedstocks used in fermentation.

Other practical risks are regulatory timelines particularly in the EU for food ingredients, the need for sustained process stability and batch to batch consistency, and the scale of contract manufacturing capacity for lipid products. The company has not disclosed the name of its commercial manufacturing partner, nor detailed process economics that would support the claim of cost competitiveness versus commodity fats.

Why this matters for Europe’s bioeconomy

The financing and the involvement of the EIC Fund reflect a broader EU policy push to back advanced bioindustrial solutions that reduce reliance on imported commodities and improve sustainability. The EIC Accelerator has become an important signal that a technology aligns with EU priorities for green and digital transitions. Strategic industry backers such as Beiersdorf and Valio indicate interest from corporates that can help with product testing, co development and market access.

At the same time the sector is still nascent. Europe’s pathway to industrialising precision fermented ingredients will depend on multiple companies proving economics at scale and navigating differing regulatory regimes across jurisdictions. Public support can help derisk early stages of scale up but does not remove the commercial and technical hurdles that underwriters and buyers will scrutinise.

Timeline and milestones

Company background

Melt&Marble describes itself as a decade plus research effort with a platform of microbial engineering and precision fermentation to make tailored fats from simple feedstocks without relying on conventional plant or animal sources. The company claims a robust intellectual property portfolio and an initial focus on alternative proteins and personal care markets.

Bottom line

The Series A is a meaningful vote of confidence from both investors and strategic corporates that see potential in engineered lipids. The EIC involvement highlights policy level interest in home grown bioindustrial capacity. The technology offers plausible sustainability and functionality gains but commercial success depends on economics at scale, regulatory clearances for food use, and the operational reality of outsourcing production to manufacturing partners. Observers should watch yield and cost metrics, named manufacturing partnerships, and regulatory filings as the company moves from demo to commercial supply.