Ferm Labs raises €3M seed to speed up food fermentation

What's the deal? Ferm LabsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Swiss-Italian ingredients startup, has raised €3 million in a seed round led by CDP Venture CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. Fund FDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, Redstone, Euregio+, Alpine VC, and food group LoackerDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → also joined. Founded in 2025 by Stephanie Lüpold and Mattia Baroni, the company makes natural flavour ingredients for food.

What's the endgame? Ferm Labs steers non-GMO microbes to cut fermentation time from weeks to hours. Its system turns agricultural by-products into kokumi peptides, producing clean-label flavour pastes and powders without E-numbers, added fats, or high sodium.

Why now? The round centres on the launch of Kokumesan, a dairy-based ingredient for industrial cheese applications in the US and Europe. It aims to deliver an aged-cheese aroma while cutting production costs, fat, and salt, and extending shelf life.

"We have simply rewritten the laws of industrial flavour kinetics," said Baroni, chief technology officer and co-founder (translated from German). By raising fermentation speed and yield, he added, the company removes the price premium on natural ingredients.

What's the money for? The capital will fund an expansion of bioprocessing facilities in South Tyrol, the buildout of a European B2B sales team, and additional hires for research on new product categories.

The signal: Investor interest in fermentation-based food tech continues, echoing rounds like Pacifico Biolabs' €7 million raise to turn breweries into protein factories. Ferm Labs is betting that cheaper natural ingredients can win over industrial food makers still weighing cost against clean labels.

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Image credit: Ferm Labs