Spanish foodtech company MOA Foodtech has secured €3.3 million ($3.8 million) in new funding to expand its AI-driven biomass fermentation platform and increase production of ingredients made from agricultural and food-industry side streams.
The financing, backed by the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Swanlaab Innvierte Agri Food Tech and CDTI-Innvierte, will support an increase in fermentation capacity from 120,000-litre to 225,000-litre bioreactors, while helping the company move its ingredient portfolio towards broader commercial deployment.
Turning agrifood side streams into functional ingredients
Founded in 2020 by CEO Bosco Emparanza, CSO Susana Sánchez and CFO José María Elorza, MOA Foodtech uses non-GMO yeast strains to convert agricultural and food-industry byproducts into ingredients for human food and animal nutrition.
The company works with side streams including distillers’ grains and crop residues. According to MOA, it also collaborates with agricultural producers generating more than 100,000 tonnes of annual side streams, creating a route for these materials to be converted into marketable inputs rather than treated solely as waste.
Its current ingredient portfolio includes three products. MOA Q5 is positioned as an egg replacer and emulsifier for applications including bakery products and sauces. MOA Yeast is designed to contribute to taste, texture and nutritional characteristics in food products, while MOA Yeast FeG is targeted at pet food and livestock nutrition.
MOA Yeast FeG has already reached commercial application in a pet food product available on the market. Validation work for MOA Q5 and MOA Yeast is continuing with food manufacturers in Europe.
AI Optimises fermentation feedstocks
A central component of MOA Foodtech’s platform is its proprietary AI engine, Albatross, which the company uses to optimise fermentation conditions when variable agrifood byproducts are used as growth media.
The challenge is that side streams can differ significantly in their chemical composition. MOA combines data on these materials with metabolic models associated with more than 300 microbial strains in its internal library.
The company says the system allows it to identify combinations of feedstocks and microorganisms that can deliver the desired biomass while reducing reliance on conventional carbon sources such as dextrose.
CEO Bosco Emparanza said sustainability alone is insufficient and that the company also needs to reduce the cost of culture media. He described Albatross as a tool for combining byproducts and microbes to identify more efficient fermentation conditions for a particular biomass.
MOA says the approach has also shortened its development cycle. According to Emparanza, the development of its first ingredient took approximately six months from experimental design to identifying optimal laboratory conditions. With Albatross, the company says a comparable process can now be completed in less than two weeks.
Scaling production and commercial applications
The new investment will allow MOA to increase fermentation capacity through larger bioreactors, moving from 120,000 litres to 225,000 litres.
Production is currently carried out through a contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) partner in Spain, while MOA sells its proprietary ingredients directly to manufacturers through its own sales operation.
The company is also pursuing co-development projects with businesses seeking to convert their own side streams into functional ingredients. These arrangements can involve external manufacturers, partner facilities or licensing, depending on the project, according to Emparanza.
This model gives MOA a route to work with feedstock owners without necessarily requiring a dedicated fermentation plant to be constructed at each partner’s site.
From waste feedstocks to fermentation inputs
The commercial proposition behind the platform combines two challenges: finding productive uses for agrifood side streams and reducing the cost of feedstocks used in microbial fermentation.
Instead of relying exclusively on traditional carbon sources, MOA is seeking to use lower-cost byproducts as fermentation inputs. Its AI platform is intended to address the variability of these materials by matching their composition with suitable microbial strains and fermentation conditions.
The company’s approach therefore links biomass fermentation, food manufacturing and agricultural side-stream valorisation within a single production model.
Bioenergy Business Analysis
MOA Foodtech’s funding highlights a broader opportunity at the intersection of biomass utilisation and industrial biotechnology: the economic value of a side stream can depend not only on its availability, but also on whether technology can consistently convert it into a specification suitable for commercial use.
The move towards larger bioreactors is particularly significant because laboratory optimisation and commercial-scale production present different challenges. MOA’s ability to translate its feedstock and microbial optimisation process into larger-scale manufacturing will be an important factor in determining whether the platform can deliver the cost and efficiency advantages claimed by the company.
The development also illustrates how AI can be applied beyond conventional data-analysis applications in the bioeconomy. In this case, its proposed role is to manage variability in biological feedstocks and accelerate process development, potentially helping fermentation companies evaluate a wider range of lower-cost inputs.
For the wider bioenergy and circular-bioeconomy sectors, the key commercial question is whether agricultural and food-industry side streams can be supplied consistently enough, and processed economically enough, to compete with established fermentation feedstocks.
MOA’s expansion from 120,000-litre to 225,000-litre bioreactors represents the next stage in testing that proposition at greater production scale.
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