Pili raises new funds to scale up a biotech indigo - insidedenim: Glo InsideDenim

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Pili raises new funds to scale up a biotech indigo

28/02/2023
Pili raises new funds to scale up a biotech indigo
French biotech company Pili has announced it has raised $15.8 million in a Series A funding round to scale up and begin producing a biobased indigo in tens of tonnes. The round was led by French state-run investment bank, Bpifrance, and saw new investors join, including Famille C Participations, owned by the Courtin-Clarins family, and a privately-owned Italian company. The promising start-up has raised $30 million since its launch.

Founded in Toulouse in 2015 by Guillaume Boissonnat-Wu, Marie-Sarah Adenis and Jérémie Blache (pictured, left to right), Pili has been seeking to develop dyes and pigments for textiles, paper and paints through a biotech fermentation process. It believes that its hybrid combination of industrial fermentation and green chemistry could offer a cost-competitive alternative to dyes and pigments derived from fossil fuels.

The funds will be used to build a demonstration facility with a capacity of tens of tonnes. It will be installed next to Pili’s industrial pilot currently in operation, producing in the kilogrammes, and located in France’s Chemical Valley, south of Lyon.

Pili says it has secured several million euros of pre-orders for its biobased dyes and pigments.

The company is now focusing specifically on indigo and claims that its technology delivers a high-performance biotech pigment that cuts CO2 emissions by more than 50%.

Image from left to right, the three founders, Guillaume Boissonnat-Wu, Marie-Sarah Adenis and Jérémie Blache. Photo by Thierry Augereau

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