January 19, 2022

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

In recent years we’ve been hearing about biomaterials companies making leather alternatives from a variety of foods or agricultural side streams, but San Francisco-based biomaterials company MycoWorks has perfected the technology and is achieving scale in production. 

To fuel its growth, the company announced it has just closed on a $125 million Series C led by Prime Movers Lab, and including new investors Sk Networks and Mirabaud Lifestyle Impact & Innovation Fund, among other unnamed participants. 

Co-founded in 2013 by Phillip Ross and Sophia Wang, MycoWorks has patented what it calls its Fine Mycelium process – a proprietary biotechnology platform that engineers mycelium to grow the only made-to-order, made-to-specification natural material with the performance of fine animal leathers at a lower environmental impact.

“We are thrilled to partner with new and returning investors who have deep experience in manufacturing scale-up. MycoWorks’ Fine Mycelium platform produces the world’s highest-quality, leather-like material via a proprietary process that we own and operate,” said Matt Scullin, CEO, MycoWorks. “As the only vertically-integrated biomaterials company in the new materials space, we will use this new capital to continue growing our leadership position.”

Refined over two decades of R&D, Fine Mycelium gives brands’ creative teams unprecedented input at the material level – giving them the ability to select and customize the thickness, weight, hand, and drape of their materials. Using its tray-based system, Fine Mycelium engineers the mycelium as it grows to create perfectly uniform, high-quality sheets of material at scale. And through its vertical integration, Fine Mycelium can transform a brand’s supply chain, lifting its sustainability profile through greater traceability, minimized waste, and need for post-processing.

These abilities saw MycoWorks forge its first partnership with luxury brand Hermès in Spring of 2021, while it has established contracts with a range of other global brands as it works toward entering the market at a range of price points at mass scale production.

“What MycoWorks has achieved with its Fine Mycelium platform is not just a breakthrough, it is a revolution for industries that are ripe for change,” said David Siminoff, general partner, Prime Movers Lab. “This opportunity is massive, and we believe that unrivaled product quality combined with a proprietary, scalable manufacturing process has MycoWorks poised to serve as the backbone of the new materials revolution.”

To do this, the company will use the funds raised through this round to launch its first full-scale Fine Mycelium production plant in Union City, South Carolina, to meet the growing demand for the company’s materials, including its flagship product, Reishi™.

This new facility will be modeled after MycoWorks’ pilot plant located in Emeryville, California, that has successfully demonstrated the scalability of the production process. Over the course of the past year, the pilot plant has met targeted costs, demonstrated high yields, and has achieved the company’s production milestone of 10,000 trays processed.

The new facility, once online in a year, will be capable of mass-producing volumes of several million square-feet of Fine Mycelium materials per year. The new funding will also be allocated to expand the company’s team and to continue its R&D and innovations advancing its platform.

“MycoWorks makes the only product that we have found that resembles animal leather’s quality, and they are producing it on a highly scalable platform,” said Ho Jeong Lee, executive vice president, SK Networks. “We are excited to partner to manufacture Fine Mycelium materials on a global scale.”

– Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Oilseed & Grain News. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com. 

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