Differential Bio Emerges from Stealth with €2M to Scale AI-Driven Biomanufacturing
Differential Bio, a Munich-based startup focused on AI-powered biomanufacturing, has emerged from stealth with €2 million in pre-seed funding.
The company is developing a "Virtual Scale-up Platform" that integrates advanced microbiology, robotics, and machine learning to optimize bioprocess development—an area often cited as a bottleneck in industrial biotechnology due to its high costs and long timelines. The platform is designed to simulate and automate the scale-up of microbial processes, minimizing reliance on physical experimentation and expediting the path to commercialization.
Backed by Ananda Impact Ventures and ReGen Ventures, along with Carbon13, Climate Capital, Better Ventures, CDTM Ventures, and several angel investors, the company aims to address structural inefficiencies in biomanufacturing. The technology targets challenges exacerbated by recent global events such as supply chain disruptions, disease-related shortages, and regulatory shifts in food and materials production.
The startup claims its platform can significantly reduce time and cost to scale. In one probiotic case study, Differential Bio reports achieving a 4x increase in biomass yield and a 16% reduction in production costs while shifting to a more sustainable, plant-based growth medium.
According to CEO Christian Spier, current biomanufacturing scale-up timelines can take 5–10 years and require hundreds of millions of euros. The Virtual Scale-up Platform combines miniaturized fermentation, automated data collection, and predictive AI models to streamline optimization cycles and improve yield efficiency. CSO Dong Zhao, formerly of Nosh.Bio, emphasized that the system allows for multi-objective optimization without trade-offs between cost and sustainability. The startup's team also includes CTO Martin Patz, formerly of Recogni, and brings combined experience in bioinformatics, AI, and bioprocess engineering.
The €2M round will be used to expand the platform’s capabilities to support more complex processes, extend the company’s self-driving lab infrastructure, and hire in areas such as bioinformatics and lab automation. Differential Bio is also onboarding clients in food, cosmetics, and specialty chemicals. According to the team, the long-term ambition is to make biomanufacturing as modular and scalable as modern software development.
Investors describe the company as a response to a growing need for scalable solutions in the bioeconomy, with projections suggesting that up to 60% of physical inputs in key industries could be biologically manufactured in the future. As biomanufacturing capacity increases, Differential Bio positions itself as an infrastructure layer for rapid, AI-guided process development.
Topics: Startups & Deals
