Nucleus Capital

We’re thrilled to celebrate a major milestone for our portfolio company, Planet A Foods, which has successfully raised a $30M Series B round! 💥 This achievement is not just a testament to the team’s incredible work - it’s a critical step forward in addressing the systemic challenges of the cocoa industry: Deforestation, high levels of water consumption and CO₂ emissions 🌍 🍫 Chocolate production is increasingly at risk due to extreme weather events like droughts and floods. The impacts are already visible today - cocoa prices have surged to over $9,600 a tonne, signaling mounting challenges to food system stability. 🌿 Industrial cocoa farming has caused massive environmental damage. In Côte d’Ivoire alone, one-quarter of all forest land has been lost, devastating ecosystems and exacerbating the climate crisis. By harnessing cutting-edge technology, Dr. Sara Marquart and Dr. Maximilian Marquart are changing this narrative, bringing climate resilience into the food system and mitigating emissions while offering a sustainable and delicious alternative to traditional cocoa. Their flagship product ChoViva is already trusted by major brands like REWE Group, Lindt & Sprüngli, Lufthansa and Deutsche Bahn. The funding round was co-lead by Burda Principal Investments and ZINTINUS with participation from Cherry Ventures, World Fund, Omnes, Tengelmann Ventures and Bayern Kapital. You can read more about the topic in the TechCrunch article below as well as our deep-dive post on Medium. #venturecapital #foodtech #synbio #sustainability

How do you solve problems in drug discovery that no existing technology can? The answer: With Liquid Brain™ 🧠, a natural computer that decodes molecular behavior to solve the unsolvable. Two weeks ago, at PEGS Europe, Shamit Shrivastava & Anshika Srivastava and their incredible team at Apoha unveiled this breakthrough technology for the first time in public! For decades, the field of antibody developerability has accepted significant blind spots. Current workflows are designed to measure narrow biophysical properties through multiple assays, each offering fragmented insights into an antibody’s behavior. While these methods are useful, they often fail to uncover hidden risks - biophysical characteristics that can predict clinical success or failure. The Liquid Brain changes that. By generating a fundamentally new class of biophysical data, the Liquid Brain provides a rich, multi-dimensional perspective on antibody behavior. For the first time in history, researchers can access state diagrams which are high-dimensional representations of molecular behavior captured from just 10 µg of material. This isn’t just a refinement of current methods; it's a true paradigm shift 🤯 The same behavioral data foundation that transforms antibody developerability is already unlocking insights in proteins, fats, mixtures, and formulations, demonstrating the platform's scalability across industries 🚀 #venturecapital #deeptech #techbio

A major milestone for our portfolio company, Concert Bio 🙌 Founder & CEO Paul Rutten just made the first commercial delivery of Overture™, an innovative microbial product, to JEPCO - a leading UK hydroponic lettuce producer, to boost production yields 🥬 This collaboration is more than just a sale - it’s a step forward in transforming microbiome management for greenhouse growers around the world 🌱 Congratulations to the entire team 🥂 #venturecapital #foodtech #synbio

🌊 Last week Brineworks officially launched their first pilot in Gran Canaria! This milestone represents more than just a technological achievement - it’s the first real-world demonstration of their breakthrough electrolyzer technology applied for the removal of CO2 in ocean water. With this major de-risking step, their goal of making sustainable, affordable, and abundant CO₂ available for E-fuel production came a lot closer 🚀 Congratulations to Joseph Perryman and Gudfinnur Sveinsson and your purpose-driven team of scientists and engineers ☘ #venturecapital #deeptech #climatetech

Last week we hosted our inaugural #foodtech event in Berlin and enjoyed a full house with enticing deep dives and an energetic atmosphere! 🤩 Hats off to all the amazing speakers Dr. Julia Koehn, Raffael Wohlgensinger, Carolina Villa, Clément Tischer, Gil Horsky🎗️, Roderik Bronkhorst, Harry Briggs, Dr. Nadine Geiser and Dominic R. 🙏 Thank you everyone who made it to the event! We are really happy about the outcome and feel blessed to be part of such a buzzing community! #venturecapital #foodtech

🤩 We’re proud to share that our portfolio company Apoha, will offer an exclusive preview of their groundbreaking Liquid Brain® at the Protein & Antibody Engineering Summit #PEGS in Barcelona next week! This state-of-the-art technology is set to transform drug discovery, providing ultra-precise, multi-parametric biophysical insights from as little as 10 micrograms of material. Imagine accessing critical developerability data at the hit identification stage - insights that typically take months, now revealed almost effortless in minutes ⏰ 📅 Join CEO Shamit Shrivastava’s Talk “Beyond AI: Liquid Brain® - How to Get Developability Insights in Minutes, Not Months” on Tuesday, Nov 5, 6:05 pm. 🔍 Experience The Liquid Brain® at Booth #304 and witness how this technology compares to the combined power of 12 traditional assays. If you're at PEGS Europe, don’t miss this chance to see The Liquid Brain® in action! #venturecpatial #techbio #drugdiscovery #biophysics #PEGS2024 Anshika Srivastava, Akshay Mishra, Pratik Kotkar, Swati Nakra Carolina Zirn

💥 Meet the Rio Tinto backed startups set to decarbonize & transform mining💥   💡 The mining industry, responsible for 5-7% of global CO2 emissions, is often overlooked in decarbonization discussions. Yet, as demand for critical minerals like copper, lithium and nickel is expected to skyrocket to support the energy transition, the sector must cut emissions by 90% by 2050. In order to meet this challenge, mining giant Rio Tinto partnered with Founders Factory to launch a climate and deep tech accelerator, investing $14.4 million in Pre-Seed and Seed-stage startups. The goal? Revolutionize mining operations through decarbonization, automation, and process innovation! We are beyond excited to see both our portfolio companies Endolith and Magmatic Bio among the inaugural cohort of six early-stage startups selected for their unique technologies 🔬 huge congratulations!! 🚀 🥂 Learn more about the details in Forbes's recent article in the comments below. Liz Dennett, PhD, Renee Hodges, Christine Green, Oliver Siegel, Dhaarsi Jaksch, PhD, Tilmann Burckstummer #venturecapital #synbio #mining #climatetech

🌱 Exciting news: Royal Cosun, an international and leading agricultural cooperative owned by around 8400 sugar beet growers, has invested CHF 3 million into our portfolio company planetary! This partnership marks a significant step in expanding fermentation based #mycoprotein, offering food ingredients that meet high standards for taste, texture, health, and affordability 💚 Thijs Bosch, MD of Cosun Protein said that “Planetary’s expertise in biotechnology will accelerate our ambition to become a significant player in fermentation enabled ingredients. This investment and partnership underlines our commitment to the goals we set for ourselves in our Unlock strategy." David Brandes, Marison Ian, Charles Pontvianne, Muyiwa Akintoye, Joachim Schulze #venturecapital #synbio #foodtech

🚀 Huge congratulations to Liza Altena, Julius Pröll, Sebastian Bartels & Thomas Remke and the entire repath team for raising a €3.6M Seed round led by Greencode Ventures and Lightbird to drive Climate Adaptation in the energy sector 🌍 With climate change intensifying, traditional adaptation strategies are no longer sufficient. repath's AI-powered platform provides in-depth, asset-level analysis to identify infrastructure vulnerabilities, enabling energy companies to take proactive, data-driven measures, ensuring energy resilience 🌱 The funding will be invested in expanding repath’s team, consisting mainly of climate scientists and data engineers and further develop it's AI Co-pilot. Alexander Bruehl, Dr. Gesa Miczaika, Christophe Aumaître, Joachim Schreiner, Markus Linder, Andrei Podlesnyi, Lin Gong-Deutschmann #venturecapital #climatetech

💥Live from The Drop in Malmö💥 Carolina Villa & Mitchell Duffy leading a discussion on „What it takes to fundraise in Industrial Biotech.“ Open-sourcing our inisghts and POV in our „Made with Biology Funding Napkin“, following the link below: https://lnkd.in/d3n8CGzM Thanks everyone for joining our Ripple! Max Mundt, David Brandes, Christian Gonzalez, PhD Katelijne Bekers #venturecapital #synbio #climatetech