Arsenale Bioyards secures €9.5 million to transform biomanufacturing

Milan, Italy-based Arsenale Bioyards has announced the successful closure of its first €9.5 million (US$10.3 million) Seed financing round, reinforcing its mission to revolutionize scalable biomanufacturing. The round was led by Planet A and byFounders, with participation from CDP Ventures, Acequia Capital, Plug N Play, Grey Silo Ventures, and industrial family offices.

“Arsenale is not only imagining the bio-economy of the future—we are building it today, with operational facilities and proprietary technology,” commented Massimo Portincaso, CEO & Co-founder of Arsenale Bioyards. “This funding reinforces our ability to drive measurable change and underscores our aspiration to build a new generative, biology-driven industrial paradigm.”

Founded in 2023 by Portincaso, Gordana Djordjevic, Niels Agerbaek, Matteo Zanotto, and Arnaud Legris, Arsenale Bioyards is pioneering a proprietary end-to-end platform that integrates advanced hardware, AI-driven software, and precision fermentation to bridge the gap between lab-scale innovation and industrial production. By enabling industries such as food, chemicals, and materials to develop and scale bio-based alternatives to petrochemicals and animal-derived products, Arsenale aims to transform the €191 billion (US$207 billion) biomanufacturing market.

The company’s modular approach leverages its Bioyards—industrial-scale bioreactor batteries that facilitate cost-effective scaling-out, rather than the conventional scaling-up approach. This system, combined with real-time data collection and AI-driven optimization, significantly reduces both operational and capital expenditures, cutting costs by up to 90% while accelerating time-to-market.

“At Planet A, we saw Arsenale’s potential early on—this is a fundamental rethink of how biomanufacturing scales,” said Christoph Gras, Co-founder & General Partner at Planet A Ventures. “By making production cost-competitive and standardized, Arsenale turns biomanufacturing into an investable asset class while enabling industries to move away from animal- and petrochemical-derived products at scale.”

Currently operating a fully functional pilot site equipped with 1,000-liter precision fermentation capacity—including two 500-liter bioreactors and a suite of smaller units with industry-first sensing capabilities—Arsenale is positioned to drive a new industrial trajectory toward sustainable, biology-driven production. The newly secured funding will be used to expand its infrastructure, accelerate commercialization in the food and cosmetics industries, and cement its role as a key player in the emerging neo-industrial era.