Spanish biotechnology company MOA Foodtech has secured €3.3 million in funding from three investors: the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund, Swanlaab Innvierte Agri Food Tech and CDTI-Innvierte. The capital will be used to expand commercial operations, increase manufacturing capacity and grow its existing ingredient portfolio.

The company produces functional ingredients by combining biomass fermentation with its proprietary AI platform, Albatros. Albatros identifies suitable microorganism and feedstock pairings and optimises the fermentation conditions required to produce ingredients at commercial scale. Feedstocks are drawn from agri-food side streams, which are currently underutilised or sold as low-value animal feed.

MOA's two commercial products are MOA Q5 and MOA Yeast. MOA Q5 is a multifunctional egg replacer and emulsifier produced through fermentation, with documented performance in bread, cakes, muffins and sponge cake, where it functions as a binder, aerating agent and moisture-retention ingredient, and also extends shelf life. It is additionally used in sauces.

MOA Yeast, a yeast-based ingredient, targets taste, crumb texture and nutritional value in baked goods. A third product, MOA Yeast FeG, is formulated for pet food and animal nutrition. All current ingredients use non-GMO microorganisms with established food safety status in both the EU and the United States.

Bakery has emerged as the lead category for MOA's ingredient validation work, with the company now moving from application trials to customer product launches. A key operational target is expanding fermentation capacity from 120,000-litre to 225,000-litre bioreactors, which would support that transition at volume.

Alongside direct ingredient sales, MOA intends to extend its technology licensing model, allowing industry partners to deploy its fermentation processes and use the Albatros platform to develop and optimise their own fermentation-derived solutions.

"This investment marks the next stage of MOA's journey," said Bosco Emparanza, CEO and co-founder of MOA Foodtech. "We've demonstrated our technology and successfully launched our first ingredients. Now our focus is accelerating commercial expansion, scaling production with our manufacturing partners, and expanding our portfolio into new categories, including health and nutraceutical ingredients."

Xana Belastegui, General Partner at Swanlaab Innvierte AgriFood Tech Fund, noted the investor rationale:

"We believe MOA combines a differentiated AI-enabled fermentation platform with market-validated functional ingredients highly innovative and attractive for the agrifood industry."

Beyond bakery, MOA has indicated plans to move into health and nutraceutical ingredient development and to extend its commercial reach into new geographies over the medium term.