French-German biotech company SMEY has unveiled Lipid Atlas, an AI-driven platform designed to help companies discover and produce industrial oils and fats through fermentation. Built on a proprietary library of more than 1,000 natural yeast strains, the system replaces agriculture with precision biology, offering a new way to source key lipids for cosmetics, food, and specialty chemicals.
Today, fewer than 20 plant oils, such as palm, cocoa, and soybean, support a global market worth over $480 billion. This narrow base exposes industries to climate shocks, geopolitical risks, and fragile supply chains. Lipid Atlas changes that by analysing genomic data to predict which yeast strains can produce specific fatty-acid profiles, effectively acting as a “periodic table of oils.”
“Ark of Noah” for fermented oils
SMEY’s platform is powered by its Neobank of Yeasts (NOY), a collection of natural, non-GMO strains that act as an “Ark of Noah” for fermented oils. Instead of extracting ingredients from crops, companies can now identify yeast capable of producing both known and entirely new lipid compositions.
So far, more than 350 oil profiles have been mapped, vastly expanding the industry’s options. Some yeast strains can accumulate up to 80% of their dry weight as oil, making large-scale production in bioreactors viable and independent of land or harvest cycles.
This approach has already produced tangible innovations. Noyl Silk, SMEY’s flagship fermented oil, introduces a unique lipid structure designed for enhanced functionality. Meanwhile, Noyl Omega-7 delivers over 40% palmitoleic acid, a fatty acid naturally found in human sebum, in a lightweight, colour-neutral format suited for cosmetics.
€8M funding to fuel development
At the moment, this is primarily a technology launch, but SMEY is in active discussions with investors as the company scales its fermentation platform and industrial partnerships.
To date, SMEY has raised €8 million in total funding. Around half of that investment has been dedicated to developing the company’s core discovery infrastructure, the Neobank of Yeasts (NOY) and the Lipid Atlas technology.
Visionary founder behind this idea
SMEY was founded by Viktor Sartakov-Korzhov in 2022, with a mission to unlock microbial diversity for industrial use. By combining AI, genomics, and fermentation, the company is building a new foundation for materials discovery.
Lipid Atlas signals a broader shift, one where oils are no longer constrained by what agriculture can provide, but are instead engineered at the microbial level for performance, scalability, and resilience.
Real-world applications
The technology helps companies find or design oils with specific functional properties. Today, manufacturers are limited to the oils agriculture produces. With Lipid Atlas they can identify yeast strains that naturally produce oils with specific fatty acid profiles, desired melting points, better oxidative stability, and improved skin compatibility
It’s use cases include, cosmetics companies can discover oils with better skin absorption or texture; food companies can identify fats with specific melting behaviour for products like chocolate or bakery; and oleochemical companies can find lipid structures useful for specialty materials.
Instead of relying only on commodity oils such as palm or soybean, these companies can explore hundreds of alternative lipid profiles and select ones that match their technical needs.
How about competition
There are several companies working on fermentation-derived oils, but none offering a comparable data-driven lipid discovery technology.
Most players in the space focus on producing one specific molecule (for example a single oil or ingredient). SMEY’s approach is different: it combines a large microbial library, lipid mapping, and AI prediction to discover and design many different oils.
Examples of adjacent companies include:
- Xylome develops fermentation-derived ingredients including cocoa butter alternatives.
- NoPalm Ingredients produces palm oil alternatives through microbial fermentation.
- C16 Biosciences creates fermentation-derived palm oil substitutes using engineered microbes.
- Gattefossé develops plant-based and specialty lipids for cosmetics and pharma.
- Lubrizol through its Algapur microalgae platform produces specialty oils for cosmetics.
- Algae Oil Innovations develops algae-derived oils for nutrition and specialty applications.
However, none provide a searchable technology that maps hundreds of lipid profiles from natural yeast diversity, which is what makes Lipid Atlas unique.
