By Michelle Pelletier Marshall, Women in Agribusiness Media

This article first ran in our sister publication, Women in Agribusiness (WIA) Today.

With a mission to “transform carbon we waste into carbon we need”, female-founded, San Francisco-based startup Hyfé is laser-focused on turning plant waste into chemicals that allow the world to make products without petroleum. 

How do they do this? Through cutting-edge biorefining technology that refines plant waste into a portfolio of specialty ingredients and chemicals – including platform chemicals, the key building blocks for petroleum.  

The team is led by Michelle Ruiz, CEO and founder. The startup’s innovative technology provides key benefits to the sector: 

For food processors, they can turn processing and on-farm waste into a valuable, steady revenue stream with over 100x uplift in value compared to animal feed.  

For specialty ingredient companies, Hyfé offers traceable, sustainable, U.S. made bioactives and fibers at a competitive price point.  

For chemical companies, Hyfé offers price stable, low cost and carbon intensity platform chemical intermediates, namely dextrose and native lignin.  

Ruiz is a chemical engineer with nearly a decade of industry experience at ExxonMobil, where she developed process engineering expertise in oil refining and played a key role as a startup engineer in multi-million-dollar capital projects, ensuring the successful commissioning and startup of new facilities. Hyfé was founded in November of 2021, raised an oversubscribed $2M pre-seed round from MIT’s Engine ventures, and in 2023 announced their oversubscribed $9 million Seed round led by Synthesis Capital.  

Hyfé CEO Michelle Ruiz

WIA Today caught up with Ruiz in her office in San Francisco, California. 

1). Please explain how Hyfé’s process transforms food waste into platform chemicals with a competitive price. And the advantages of this. 

Our technology transforms plant waste into high-value specialty chemicals, ingredients and materials by fractionating biomass into its core building blocks using green chemistry and catalysis. By extracting antioxidants, fibers, specialty oils and commodity chemicals like dextrose, we amplify the value of low-cost biomass by over 100x, which creates enough value to support competitive price points. Just as Rockefeller revolutionized oil refining—maximizing every fraction of crude oil and making petroleum the backbone of industrial development—we are redefining biomass valorization, transforming the entire biomass into a portfolio of products that power a more sustainable future. 

2). What is the potential of your technology to transform food manufacturing supply chains and the petro-chemical industry at large?  

Our technology solves a major challenge for food processors: byproduct management. These byproducts are often composted, landfilled or sold as animal feed for pennies per pound—leaving significant economic value untapped. With Hyfé’s technology, food processors can turn their waste into stable, high-revenue streams, maximizing both profitability and sustainability, and simplifying logistics. 

The petrochemical feedstock market we’re disrupting with our dextrose is currently valued at $688 billion and is projected to reach $2.4 trillion by 2050. Meanwhile, agriculture, forestry and food processing generate 4.1 billion tons of plant waste annually—more than enough carbon to fully replace petroleum in the petrochemical value chain. Food processing waste and on-farm food loss alone could meet one-third of today’s demand. 

This represents billions of dollars in unrealized value that could flow back into the food manufacturing industry. With the right technology, food manufacturers have the potential to become the primary suppliers of carbon feedstocks—sourcing from food that would never have reached a plate in the first place. 

At the same time, our process offers a cost-competitive pathway for the petrochemical industry to decarbonize and expand production without the need for significant investment in exploration or production of new reservoirs. Today, petrochemical-based products—plastics, detergents and other consumer goods—account for 7 percent of global carbon emissions, largely due to the carbon-intensive extraction and refining of fossil resources. Our technology enables the industry to utilize existing plant waste as a feedstock, cutting emissions while ensuring long-term resource availability. By integrating biomass into the petrochemical value chain, we provide a solution that allows companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve petroleum for future generations and scale production sustainably—all without disrupting existing infrastructure or market dynamics. 

3). As Hyfé noted, the glucose needs of the bioeconomy are forecasted to outpace supply over the next 10-20 years. How will your company’s efforts provide the needed feedstocks in a way that is non-disruptive to food and agricultural systems? 

Hyfe’s approach ensures that the growing demand for dextrose does not compete with agriculture or food supply chains. Rather than diverting crops or arable land, we tap into an abundant, underutilized resource—food and plant waste—which will only continue to grow as the global population increases. This allows us to provide a stable, cost-predictable dextrose supply without disrupting food production or increasing strain on agricultural systems. 

Dextrose is a critical platform chemical capable of replacing petroleum and other carbon-intensive feedstocks in chemical and material production. However, its current supply relies on crops like sugarcane, corn starch, and sugar beets, which are vulnerable to climate change, extreme weather, and shifting agricultural yields—factors that drive price volatility and make it harder for bio-based industries to compete with stable fossil feedstocks. In most bio-based processes, sugar costs constitute a major portion of production expenses, meaning fluctuations in dextrose pricing directly impact the competitiveness of bio-based fuels and materials. 

Hyfé solves this challenge by refining dextrose from plant waste, shielding it from agricultural volatility and ensuring price parity with first-generation crop-based dextrose. More importantly, our predictable pricing provides bio-based industries with the cost stability they need to scale and compete with petrochemicals. By unlocking the full value of waste streams, we are powering a future where sugar—not fossil fuels—drives the global chemical industry. 

4). Hyfé raised $9 million in a round led by Synthesis Capital. How has this funding helped grow the company, and are there additional fundraising efforts on the horizon?  

This funding has been instrumental in accelerating our growth, allowing us to build our pilot facility, advance commercial partnerships and systematically de-risk our biorefining technology. As we scaled, we identified solid food waste as a superior feedstock to food processing wastewater—unlocking stronger economics, broader industrial applications and greater scalability. This strategic shift has positioned us to maximize impact and accelerate commercialization. 

Our pilot, debuting at SF Climate Week on April 23rd, is a key step in scaling up—validating real-world feedstocks, refining process economics and evaluating partnerships through a stage-gate approach. Beyond technical scale-up, we’ve gained strong commercial traction and are actively running a partnership process to identify the right collaborator for our first full-scale facility. This ensures we not only de-risk the technology but also position ourselves for rapid deployment with the best-fit partner. 

With these efforts underway, we are laying the foundation for our next phase of growth and plan to enter the market for our Series A in Q1 of 2026. 

5). What results have your clients experienced, and are there any new products/technology in the pipeline?  

Our work with partners has already demonstrated over 100x value uplift for food processing byproducts. We are conducting feasibility studies to identify the highest-potential byproducts for creating high-value, drop-in replacements in existing specialty chemical markets, with a current focus on high-quality polyphenols and extracts. Looking ahead, we are committed to scaling and optimizing our biorefining technology to drive the best possible economics. Our first-of-a-kind facility is already projected to be profitable with strong margins. Rather than expanding into new product lines, we are focused on perfecting our process—maximizing efficiency, quality and long-term industry success. 
  

6). Our Women in Agribusiness Summit highlights professionals in ag who are female. How did you come to start Hyfé, and how has that journey been? What advice do you have for women in the agtech sector? 

I started my career as an engineer at ExxonMobil, where I supported operations at a refinery wastewater treatment plant. It was there that I realized how much value was being lost in waste streams, sparking my curiosity about how circularity could solve some of the world’s greatest challenges. 

At the time, I had been at ExxonMobil for nearly a decade, and in the middle of COVID, I found myself reflecting deeply on climate change and how our personal efforts impact the people we love most. Then one day, I came home—still in my fireproof coveralls, dirty from field walkdowns—to find my two sisters waiting for me. One was a climate economist, the other a high school climate activist. They had flown to Chicago just to have a conversation with me. 

They sat me down, told me they loved me, and then said: “It’s time.” They told me that my passion, drive and skills were needed in the fight against climate change—and that it was time for me to take a risk and think about how I could make an impact far greater than myself. That was the push I needed to finally step beyond the guardrails I had kept around my potential. 

It was the best decision I’ve ever made. Founding Hyfé has pushed me to grow beyond what I thought possible, believe in the power of unreasonable entrepreneurs and appreciate the strength of teams built on ambition, trust and vision. 

My advice to women in agtech? Do the things that scare you. Take the risk. Put yourself out there, even if the industry doesn’t welcome you at first. And most importantly, have the courage to believe in yourself and step into your full potential. 

The content put forth by Global AgInvesting News and its parent company HighQuest Partners is intended to be used and must be used for informational purposes only. All information or other material herein is not to be construed as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Global AgInvesting and HighQuest Partners are not a fiduciary in any manner, and the reader assumes the sole responsibility of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use of any information or other content on this site.