Industrial biotech startup baCta has raised €7 million in seed funding to accelerate its vision of replacing petrochemical and resource-intensive ingredients with smarter bioproduction.
The round was led by LocalGlobe and Daphni, with participation from OVNI Capital and prominent business angels, including founders of Phagos, Genomines and MistralAI. As discussed with TFN, baCta stated, “The company has raised a total funding of €10.3 million.”
The investment marks a major step toward scaling baCta’s first product, a next-generation antioxidant and expanding baCtaForge, its strain-engineering platform built to transform how industrial ingredients are produced.
A faster path to molecules the world needs
Today’s ingredient supply chains depend heavily on petrochemical synthesis or extraction from limited natural sources, both expensive and increasingly exposed to climate and geopolitical disruptions. Bioproduction has long promised a cleaner alternative, but designing high-yield strains has traditionally required years of costly trial and error.
baCta aims to break that bottleneck. Its platform, baCtaForge, blends synthetic biology, robotics and advanced modelling to explore genomic “dark matter”, the long-range, often-overlooked genetic interactions that influence productivity. By mapping these hidden pathways, the system can design improved strains far faster than traditional methods.
A key component is its bio-based reinforcement learning loop, enabling the platform to continuously optimise strains while reducing development costs and timelines by an order of magnitude.
The team behind this startup
Founded by Mathieu Nohet and Marie Rouquette in Paris, baCta’s mission is rooted in a simple idea that microorganisms can become programmable factories capable of producing valuable ingredients sustainably and at scale.
Mathieu Nohet graduated from CentraleSupélec and Columbia University, and co-founded the govtech startup Manty, which offers a decision-support platform for local governments. He led the company from its inception through to its sale to the Relyens Group in 2022. He then turned his attention to synthetic biology as a tool to maximise the availability of raw materials, and co-founded baCta in early 2024 after a period of learning and engagement with the French and European biotech ecosystem.
Marie Rouquette discovered biology at École Polytechnique, carried out her first research project at the National University of Singapore (NUS), and then earned a PhD in Pharmaceutics and Biopharmacy from Université Paris-Saclay. She subsequently joined the biotech company Eligo Bioscience, where she first led regulatory affairs before taking responsibility for clinical and preclinical projects. She supported the company’s first program from the lab through entry into clinical trials and helped secure its Series B funding. At the end of 2023, driven by impact considerations, she became interested in industrial biotechnology and decided to found baCta with Mathieu in 2024.
Starting with a high-value antioxidant
The company’s first commercial target is astaxanthin, a €1B+ global market spanning human supplements, cosmetics, speciality nutrition and aquaculture. Most astaxanthin sold today is either synthetic, derived from petrochemicals, or extracted from microalgae at high cost and on a limited scale.
baCta’s approach uses a proprietary yeast strain to produce a drop-in replacement: a natural-quality ingredient delivered at competitive unit economics. This blend of affordability and performance positions the product as a strong challenger to existing supply chains.
With the new funding, baCta will advance astaxanthin into industrial-scale production, validate pilot-stage processes and prepare for commercial rollout. A strategic partnership with a major French industrial operator gives the company early access to production infrastructure, smoothing the transition from lab to factory.
What’s next?
Detailing the plans for the next 12 months, the company stated, “Industrial scale up (>100m3) of the astaxanthin process, regulatory approval (FDA), and first sales.”
“We are entering a new era where microorganisms can be used as programmable molecular factories to synthesise organic molecules profitably at commercial scale,” said Mathieu Nohet, Founder & CEO of baCta. “This investment allows us to reach industrial scale for our first ingredient, and demonstrate the value of our unique AI-driven approach, proving that we can make the supply of industrial ingredients both resilient and abundant.”
“baCta represents the convergence of deep biological data and Generative AI,” said Remus Brett at LocalGlobe. “Mathieu and his team have built an engine that doesn’t just promise scientific breakthroughs but delivers industrial viability. We are excited to support them in building a generational company in the bio-economy.”
“The transition away from petrochemicals is one of the most critical challenges of our time,” added Pierre-Yves Meerschman at Daphni. “baCta’s platform approach offers a scalable, economically viable path to replace dirty supply chains with biological factories. Their vision for 2035 aligns perfectly with our thesis on sustainable industrial transformation.”
