Biomatter raises $18 million to expand AI enzyme design
The Lithuanian company plans a new Vilnius facility in 2027 and an expansion of its commercial team and US presence.
Biomatter, based in Vilnius, has secured $18 million in Series A funding to expand its platform for designing enzymes with artificial intelligence. The company announced the financing on 12 November. Astanor headed the oversubscribed round, with returning investors UVC Partners, Inventure and Metaplanet participating. No valuation was disclosed.
The funding will support a new facility in Vilnius covering 2,000 m², where Biomatter will design and test enzymes. It is due to open in 2027. The company expects the site to reduce development cycles to days rather than weeks. It also plans to expand its commercial team and US presence.
Rather than modifying naturally occurring enzymes, Biomatter says it starts with the chemistry of a desired reaction. Its system combines computational modeling and laboratory experiments, feeding new test results into the data used to train its models. Enzymes accelerate chemical reactions and are used in pharmaceutical, food ingredient and laboratory reagent production.
Biomatter reports delivering more than 50 custom enzymes for more than 25 enterprise customers, including AstraZeneca, BASF and Sanofi. It says about half its customers are in the US. One product has reached the market: Thermo Fisher Scientific sells Invitrogen SuperScript V Reverse Transcriptase, a molecular biology enzyme that Biomatter helped make more resistant to oxidation.
