Startup Battlefield company ÄIO invented a method to make edible fat from ag waste like sawdust

Äio (pronounced EYE-oh) is the Estonian deity of dreams. It seems a sweetly appropriate namesake for a rising startup, called ÄIO, from that tiny Baltic country that has developed a process to turn agricultural discarded similar sawdust into fats for the nutrient and cosmetic industries. 

This process could beryllium a mode to trim the world’s dependency connected thenar oil, which has go a staple for food and cosmetics for its emulsifying and preservative properties. Unfortunately, because of that plant’s need for hot humid climates, this massive industry has besides notoriously destroyed rain forests and different delicate ecosystems to marque way for farms. 

ÄIO was co-founded by biotechnology scientists Nemailla Bonturi and Petri-Jaan Lahtvee based on Bonturi’s doctoral research. During her studies she invented a new microbe, a strain of yeast. Instead of consuming sugar and outputting carbon dioxide state or alcohol arsenic with bread and beer, this yeast consumes sugar and outputs fat molecules. The institution volition amusement disconnected its tech arsenic portion of Startup Battlefield astatine this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt, which runs aboriginal this period successful San Francisco.

Lahtvee was a prof of Food Tech and Bioengineering astatine Estonia’s Tallinn University of Technology and, successful 2016, running his own biotech lab there with Bonturi his first hire. She brought her microbe with her, and they worked connected the molecule, altering it to beryllium hardy capable to beryllium manufactured. 

As Estonia has a large agriculture basal of corn and different nutrient grains, arsenic good as sugarcane and lumber, the laboratory studied how sugars produced from those ag waste streams could feed this microbe. “We started moving connected it, processing metabolic engineering tools,” Lahtvee told TechCrunch. The answer: It could devour those sugars rather well. 

The molecule’s “fat illustration is precise akin to existing fats,” Lahtvee says, and, successful its solid-fat form, probably “most intimately resembles chickenhearted fat.” But it is also possible to modify the fermentation process to nutrient a liquid oil as good that could marque it a good alternative to manufactured oils similar canola/rapeseed oil. 

In 2022, the founders knew they had a commercially viable solution and launched ÄIO with the anticipation of raising task wealth and establishing commercial partnerships to bring it to market. They’ve raised astir $7 cardinal truthful acold and, since founding, have created methods for processing precision fermentation products, won the 2024 Baltic Sustainability Award, and signed implicit 100 companies worldwide funny successful collaboration, the startup says. 

“We person a precise extended analysis after we make our merchandise and, so far, what we person seen is that our last merchandise is to the aforesaid level as rootlike oils, but for the pesticides — even more pure,” Bonturi told TechCrunch. 

Next up, the company plans to build a installation to produce the fat in commercial quantities by 2027, arsenic good arsenic licence the technology to different cosmetic and nutrient manufacturers. It also must obtain licenses to merchantability the fats arsenic food, state by country, most apt starting with Singapore, which has a past of being more open to alternate nutrient accumulation products. 

“Of course, it’s a caller benignant of mode of producing food, and we have to go done each the permits and analysis,” Bonturi said. 

As specified plans progress, Bonturi said that she hopes to amusement however “two scientists successful this tiny state could really bash thing amended for the world, but that’s conscionable my idiosyncratic dream.” 

If you privation to larn much astir ÄIO from the institution itself — portion besides checking retired dozens of others, proceeding their pitches, and listening to impermanent speakers connected four different stages — articulation america astatine Disrupt, October 27 to 29, successful San Francisco. Learn much here.