• Iwaya Giken

  Participated · Equity · Dec 2023

  Iwaya Giken designs, develops and manufactures high‑altitude gas balloons and airtight cabins intended for balloon‑based space sightseeing. The company positions its offering as a transformative ‘journey’ that expands awareness rather than merely traveling to space. It aims to enable broad public access to a near‑space experience via tethered or free‑flying high‑altitude balloon systems. The firm is headquartered in Sapporo, Hokkaido, and is led by CEO Keisuke Iwaya. Financially, the company reported a new ¥400M financing in December 2023 and said this brought its fundraising for the fiscal year to ¥970M. Since its seed round in August 2020, cumulative funding totals about ¥2.0B. Iwatani Giken designs, develops and manufactures high-altitude gas balloons and airtight pressurized cabins aimed at offering stratospheric sightseeing flights. The company was founded in April 2016 by Keisuke Iwatani, who studied aerospace engineering at Hokkaido University. Its test program has carried more than 35 staff in an experimental cabin for flight training and data collection, and it runs near-monthly tethered flight training at various sites. In February 2022 the company completed a 30m manned tethered flight test in Soma, Fukushima, and on July 23, 2023 executed a manned flight test that reached a maximum altitude of 6,072m with a flight distance of 26.35km and flight time of 131 minutes. Financially, the company has raised a total of about ¥1.6 billion to date, including a prior ¥400M round disclosed in June 2022 and the recent ¥570M round. Iwaya Giken (岩谷技研) is a passenger-technology development company based in Sapporo, Hokkaido, led by CEO Keisuke Iwaya. The company designs and develops high-altitude gas balloons and airtight passenger cabins aimed at enabling “NearSpace” travel experiences. Its stated mission frames space travel as a journey that expands people’s consciousness and perspective rather than merely transporting people outside the atmosphere. The company announced a third-party allotment financing on November 30, 2021. Following this round, Iwaya Giken has raised a cumulative total of about ¥600 million since its seed round. The firm is focused on continuing development of passenger systems and flight hardware for balloon-based NearSpace journeys.

• Embion Technologies

  Led · Series A · Dec 2021

  Embion commercializes a platform biomass processing technology that upcycles food and agricultural industry by-products into high-value, nature-derived functional ingredients for nutrition and materials. Its process is positioned to expand food resources, improve supply security, and reduce the carbon footprint of food production. The company describes itself as a Swiss industrial biotechnology and green chemistry business with global reach and impact and is a spin-off of EPFL. With the fresh capital, Embion will scale production capabilities and continue securing IP in animal and human health and nutrition. Management plans to double the company’s team within the next 18 months to unlock growth across multiple market opportunities. Embion has received recognition as a Venture Kick winner in 2016 and was named a TOP 100 Swiss Startup in 2021. Embion Technologies SA is a Swiss EPFL spin-off that has developed patented technology to extract functional ingredients from plant biomass. The company is focusing on prebiotics—natural plant extracts intended to modulate the human and animal microbiome. Embion closed a seed financing round with strategic investors and will use the capital to enhance market entry and scale its operations. CEO Georgios Savoglidis said the company made considerable progress in 2018 and aims to reach commercialization in its first identified prebiotics market within months. Andreas Weckherlin and Stephane Constant (CEO of Solevo Group Switzerland) will join the board. Embion positions itself to become a relevant global player in a rapidly growing prebiotics market that has seen three consecutive years of doubling sales and growth of more than 120 percent, per New Hope Network.

• Embion

  Led · Series A · Dec 2021

  Embion develops a catalytic biomass-processing platform that repurposes food and agricultural industry by-products into nature-derived functional ingredients for human and animal nutrition. Its technology aims to reduce the carbon footprint of food production while accelerating development of functional foods and lowering time-to-market and costs for customers. The company positions itself as a driver of upcycling in the beverage and food industries and says its solutions deliver high-value ingredients to industry leaders in nutrition and health. Embion plans to scale production capabilities and double its team within 18 months to unlock growth across multiple market opportunities. It also intends to continue securing intellectual property in animal and human health and nutrition. The company has public targets to upcycle 1 million tons of biomass and save 100 million tons of CO2 by 2025. Embion Technologies is an EPFL spin-off that develops next-generation nutritional products using a proprietary platform technology. The company’s first launched product, PREMBION, is a patented complex prebiotic for animal nutrition manufactured from brewers’ spent grains. Embion reports successful laboratory tests on 20 feedstocks that generated 80 new complex bio-actives ready for immediate commercialization. The startup has received a CHF 250,000 grant to support its upcoming Series A fundraising. Proceeds from the planned Series A are intended to scale product offerings across different markets. The team positions its technology to facilitate antibiotic-free farming and broader applications in human and animal health and nutrition. Embion Technologies develops processes to convert agricultural and other biomass residues into high-value products for the specialty ingredients and chemicals markets. Its first commercial product is a prebiotic extracted from barley spent grains that enables sugar reduction in foods and beverages and helps stimulate a healthy microbiome. The company is advancing biomass-to-biopolymers technology to transform residues into chemicals for production of 100% renewable polymers (codename PEF) that could substitute PET in food and beverage packaging and biosynthetic textiles. Embion and two EPFL laboratories are building IP around the core biomass-processing technology under a CHF 0.5 million Innosuisse grant. The grant complements an oversubscribed CHF 325k convertible note closed with private investors as part of Embion’s seed round. Embion says the funds will be used for product development and scaling up its proprietary biomass processing technology.

No current team members are available.