baCta Raises €7M to Advance AI-Powered Microbial Factories

Paris-based industrial biotech startup baCta has secured €7 million in seed funding to accelerate development of its AI-powered platform for manufacturing industrial ingredients using engineered microorganisms.

The funding round was led by LocalGlobe and Daphni, with participation from OVNI Capital and several notable business angels, including founders from Phagos, Genomines, and Mistral AI. The investment reflects growing interest in sustainable alternatives to conventional industrial production methods.

Current methods to produce industrial ingredients rely heavily on extractive or petrochemical processes that are often costly, seasonal, and susceptible to geopolitical and climate disruptions. Bioproduction, which uses living cells to manufacture chemicals, promises a more sustainable pathway, but traditional approaches to developing productive strains are slow and resource-intensive.

Founded by Mathieu Nohet and Marie Rouquette, baCta aims to address this challenge by combining artificial intelligence, precision fermentation, and advances in synthetic biology. The company’s platform, baCtaForge, uses robotics and generative AI—a form of machine learning that enables systems to create new outputs based on patterns in data—to program microorganisms as molecular factories. This approach allows the exploration of genomic regions and regulatory pathways often overlooked by standard engineering methods. Reinforcement learning, a subset of AI where algorithms learn optimal strategies through trial and feedback, is applied to speed up strain and process optimization, reducing time and costs.

CEO Mathieu Nohet noted that the industry is witnessing a shift towards microorganisms serving as programmable production systems capable of delivering organic molecules at commercial scale. With demand for bio-based ingredients growing, such technology could play an important role in reshaping how these building blocks are sourced and manufactured.

The new funding will support scaling up production, including validating industrial processes and launching pilot programs via a strategic partnership with a French industrial partner. baCta also plans to expand the baCtaForge platform to target additional high-value molecules, broadening its impact in the ingredients market.

For more information, see: tech.eu.