Paris-based baCta, an industrial biotech startup, has announced the closing of a €7 million seed funding round. The round was led by LocalGlobe and Daphni, with participation from OVNI Capital and several business angels, including the founders of Phagos, Genomines and Mistral AI.

The company is developing an AI-powered bioproduction platform to make the production of industrial ingredients more sustainable. Current production methods, such as extraction from limited natural sources or petrochemical synthesis, are often costly, seasonal, and exposed to geopolitical and climate risks.

The baCtaForge platform

Founded by Mathieu Nohet and Marie Rouquette, baCta aims to address these challenges by programming microorganisms as molecular factories for the manufacturing of industrial ingredients. The baCtaForge platform combines advances in synthetic biology, robotics, and generative AI to explore genomic regions and regulatory pathways. The company uses bio-based reinforcement learning to reduce development time and costs.

Future outlook

The new funding will be used to scale up production by validating industrial processes at pilot and commercial stages. baCta will leverage a strategic partnership with a French industrial player to access production capacity and initiate commercialization. The company also plans to expand baCtaForge’s capabilities to additional high-value ingredients.