The Novo Nordisk Foundation has allotted as much as €25 million for the BioInnovation Institute (BII) to launch a brand new initiative, ‘Upscalator’, to assist Danish and European early-stage startups with amenities, providers, and experience to assist that novel biosolutions attain the market and might drive the inexperienced transition.
The BII is a life science and DeepTech innovation institute in Copenhagen. Via their programmes, Enterprise Lab, Bio Studio and BII Quantum Lab, they assist life science and DeepTech startups with data, community, infrastructure and funding of as much as €3 million per undertaking and €1.8 million per startup.
“Biosolutions have been hailed as the subsequent new Danish tremendous sector – but when we’re to meet our ambitions, strategic initiatives are wanted. Thus, we’re happy that BII, with the assist of the Novo Nordisk Basis, can present a much-needed alternative to economically assist early-stage biosolution startups from all of Europe by offering entry to amenities and experience to scale up their options,” says Jens Nielsen, CEO of BII.
Latest exercise from 2025–2026 reveals regular, however nonetheless fragmented, early-stage funding throughout the European biosolutions and adjoining BioTech panorama.
In Finland, Avenue Biosciences raised €4.8 million to scale a protein engineering platform aimed toward bettering biologics manufacturing reliability, whereas Portugal-based PFx Biotech secured €2.5 million to advance precision-fermented human milk proteins. Denmark options prominently, with Copenhagen startups Enduro Genetics (€12 million Sequence A for scalable bioproduction applied sciences) and EvodiaBio (€6 million to scale fermentation-based flavour options) each attracting progress capital. Sweden-based Melt&Marble additionally raised round €7 million to develop designer fat utilizing industrial biotechnology approaches.
Collectively, these rounds account for about €32 million in disclosed funding and illustrate that whereas capital is flowing into precision fermentation, protein engineering and artificial biology, funding is often focused at platform improvement moderately than the pricey and knowledge-intensive upscaling section.
In opposition to this backdrop, the BII’s Upscalator initiative, instantly addresses a notable hole within the European biosolutions ecosystem by coupling funding with entry to amenities and course of experience, notably related given Denmark’s continued focus of biosolutions startups alongside broader European exercise.
“Upscalator is designed to chop time to impression. By bringing funding, infrastructure, and deep biosolutions experience collectively in a single place, we count on that we are able to scale back improvement timelines by as much as a yr and assist new inexperienced applied sciences attain the market sooner, the place they will make an actual distinction on the inexperienced transition,” provides Jens.
Information offered by the BII paints a transparent image: The worldwide financial footprint of biosolutions manufacturing is anticipated to just about double by 2035, reaching roughly €778 billion, and to create greater than 5 million jobs. In Denmark alone, biosolutions throughout sectors equivalent to agriculture, meals, and biochemicals are anticipated to assist greater than 34.000 jobs and considerably drive the inexperienced transition and the success of Danish and European biosolutions startups.
Nonetheless, there may be at present a dire want for earmarked financing and tailor-made steerage for scaling up new options. Whereas Denmark traditionally has a robust international place inside biosolutions led by giant corporates as Novonesis, Arla, and Carlsberg, the BII says that startups usually lack entry to data and amenities to efficiently upscale their options.
Jens additional underlines that, primarily based on conversations with the 23 biosolutions firms that BII supported via its acceleration and firm creation programmes, a lack of expertise of how one can upscale and the financial means to afford the providers and experience from Contract Growth and Manufacturing Organizations (CDMOs) are talked about as the important thing obstacles to bringing new biosolutions to the market.
To handle the challenges that biosolutions startups at present face, the Upscalator initiative will likely be primarily based on 5 key elements:
- An advisory perform
- A course of design unit with a small-scale course of lab for course of validation
- A community of service suppliers
- A funding car to assist upscaling
- A powerful biosolutions group of like-minded firms and stakeholders
BII’s monitor document of supporting greater than 130 startups – collectively elevating over €1 billion in exterior funding – mixed with its robust biosolutions portfolio and central location in Innovation District Copenhagen, was a key purpose why the Novo Nordisk Basis chosen BII to steer the Upscalator initiative.
Established in Denmark in 1924, the Novo Nordisk Basis is an enterprise basis with philanthropic targets. Their mission is to progress analysis and innovation within the prevention and therapy of cardiometabolic and infectious ailments in addition to to advance data and options to assist a inexperienced transformation of society.
“The inexperienced transition is determined by our means to maneuver promising biosolutions from early improvement to real-world software. BII has demonstrated a singular functionality to assist firms at this essential stage, and with Upscalator, we’re additional strengthening the European biosolutions ecosystem to allow sooner scaling, actual impression and long-term worth creation for society,” says Mikkel Skovborg, Vice President of Innovation, Novo Nordisk Basis.
To spearhead Upscalator’s actions, Jette Thykær has been employed as a director and can deliver trade expertise from Novo Nordisk and tutorial data from her background as an Affiliate Professor in Fermentation Expertise at DTU.
Upscalator will run in two three-year durations from Q1 2026 to Q1 2029 and Q1 2029 to
Q2 2032.
