{"id":162880,"date":"2025-05-13T07:32:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T05:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=162880"},"modified":"2025-05-07T12:42:00","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:42:00","slug":"solena-raises-6-7m-to-create-next-gen-textiles-using-ai-and-synthetic-biology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/solena-raises-6-7m-to-create-next-gen-textiles-using-ai-and-synthetic-biology\/","title":{"rendered":"Solena raises $6.7m to create next-gen textiles using AI and synthetic biology"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Solena Materials<\/a>\u00a0has raised $6.7 million (\u00a35.1 million) in seed funding, following a $4.1 million (\u00a33.1 million) pre-seed funding round in 2022, that it will use to produce protein fibres at scale.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

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Beautiful futuristic glossy layered dark green, turquoise, blue metallic technology background. 3D textile, silk, satin texture, abstract pattern. \u00a9 Imperial College London<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The company uses AI techniques to custom-design fibres at the molecular level which are then produced using engineered microbes. Its AI techniques allow it to optimise performance characteristics of the fibres such as appearance, hand-feel and tensile strength, and could result in new and higher performing fashion, sports apparel, and technical textiles.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solena\u2019s co-founder and CEO,\u00a0Dr James MacDonald<\/strong><\/a>, developed the techniques behind the company as a researcher at Imperial in collaboration with his other co-founders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re creating protein sequences that don\u2019t exist in nature to have the performance specifications we need while also being highly manufacturable,\u201d he<\/strong> explained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor Paul Freemont<\/a>, Solena<\/strong> co-founder and Head of the\u00a0Section of Structural and Synthetic Biology<\/a>\u00a0in Imperial\u2019s\u00a0Department of Infectious Disease<\/a>, said: \u201cThis extraordinary technology is opening up a whole new paradigm in the design of protein fibres. James has created new protein molecules that can form fibres that currently don\u2019t exist. That\u2019s really exciting because no one has been able to do that before \u2013 we\u2019ve always had to rely on what nature gave us. Now we\u2019re building our own protein fibres from first principles. This will be a paradigm shift.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Because the microbes used to produce the fibres use renewable feedstocks, the company\u2019s fibres could also potentially be produced at a lower environmental cost than synthetic textiles made from petroleum and resource-intensive natural fibres. The fibres are also biodegradable, unlike traditional synthetic fibres such as polyester.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solena launched in 2022 with premises in Imperial\u2019s White City Incubator<\/a> and later I-HUB<\/a>, and pre-seed investment from Insempra<\/a>. It has now raised further funds in a round led by Sir David Harding<\/a>, alongside SynBioVen<\/a> and Insempra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will use the investment to take on a larger facility, with an ambition to stay close to Imperial. This will allow the company to scale production of its novel textile fibres in partnership with well-known fashion brands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Professor Milo Shaffer<\/a>, Solena<\/strong> co-founder and Chair in Materials Chemistry at Imperial, said: \u201cSolena is particularly exciting, not only as a new class of high performance sustainable fibres for a wide range of applications, but also as an example of a paradigm shift in accelerating materials discovery. The combination of computational design with rapid evaluation in fibre form, directly feeds to scaled up production and implementation, exploiting established textile technology.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Dr MacDonald is sharing details of the investment today at the SynBioBeta<\/a> conference in California, near Imperial Global USA<\/a>, a hub that is helping the university build links with partners such as businesses and investors in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solena Materials\u00a0has raised $6.7 million (\u00a35.1 million) in seed funding, following a $4.1 million (\u00a33.1 million) pre-seed funding round in 2022, that it will use to produce protein fibres at scale. The company uses AI techniques to custom-design fibres at the molecular level which are then produced using engineered microbes. Its AI techniques allow it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":162903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"Imperial spinout will scale activity to create a new generation of sustainable, high-performance textiles using an entirely new class of fibres","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[26296,24550,11270,22614,14928,12615,24033,26297,26298],"supplier":[336,22037,1810],"class_list":["post-162880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-advancedfibres","tag-arteficialintelligence","tag-biodegradability","tag-biofeedstocks","tag-fashion","tag-microbes","tag-proteinfibres","tag-sportsapparel","tag-technicaltextiles","supplier-imperial-college-london","supplier-insempra","supplier-solena-group"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162880"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=162880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}