Female-founded Mykor secures €4.6M for mycelium insulation

Mykor, a climate-tech company headquartered in Bristol with operations in Lisbon, has secured €4.6 million to ramp up production of its unusual building material. The startup grows carbon-negative insulation panels from mycelium and agricultural waste, a process that challenges conventional manufacturing.

The funding round is roughly four times larger than the company’s previous total and marks the biggest single capital injection since founders Olivia Page and Valentina Dipietro launched Mykor in 2021. The product itself stands out visually in the European climate-tech scene.

MykoFoam, the company’s flagship insulation panel, is grown rather than assembled. Agricultural residues from Portugal’s Alentejo region are inoculated with fungal mycelium, which threads through the waste and bonds it into a rigid panel over about four weeks. The result matches the thermal performance of petroleum-based polyurethane and polystyrene foams.

According to Mykor, the process uses 90% less water, 40% less energy, and emits 60% less CO₂ than conventional alternatives. Its pilot facility in Montemor-o-Novo, Portugal, runs on more than 75% solar energy.

The market opportunity is significant. Construction accounts for roughly 37% of global CO₂ emissions when materials, operations, and end-of-life are included. Insulation remains one of the hardest subcategories to decarbonise. Existing low-carbon options like cellulose, wood fibre, hemp, and sheep’s wool occupy small premium niches and have struggled to break into mainstream construction procurement due to price and consistency issues.

Mykor claims MykoFoam is up to 35% cheaper than other environmentally friendly insulation products while offering better fire resistance. That regulatory pinch-point has historically kept bio-based panels out of multi-storey applications.

The competitive field is growing. UK-based BIOHM and Dutch GROWN.bio run smaller mycelium-construction operations. Italy’s Mogu sells acoustic wall panels rather than thermal insulation. US firm Ecovative has been the category pioneer for 15 years, while MycoWorks leads in high-end mycelium leather. The most-funded European mycelium company, Forêt, raised a $58 million round in early 2024. Mykor’s €4.6 million sits in the early-scale band of that landscape, but the company has an operating pilot facility and a finished product already under regulatory review.

The founder story adds weight on the cap-table side. Dipietro was named a UN Young Champion of the Earth and appears on Forbes 30 Under 30. Page brings the operating-engineer half of the partnership. The team has worked through pre-seed, seed, and now scale-up rounds with European climate-focused investors including Sustainable Ventures, Green Angel Ventures, Rumbo Ventures, and the Pera Innovation fund. The company has also received Innovate UK grants and was a 2024 Green Tech Fund winner, giving it the regulatory credentials European construction buyers want before specifying a novel material.

The harder commercial question is the gap between pilot-scale production and the volumes a mainstream construction insulation business needs. A 100-square-metre detached house typically uses around 500 to 800 square metres of insulation board. The European insulation market shipped roughly 600 million cubic metres of equivalent product in 2024. Mykor’s Portuguese plant is a meaningful pilot but not yet a fraction of one percent of that demand.

The €4.6 million round is best understood as a Series A intended to fund the next plant, the certifications stack needed for multi-storey use, and early commercial partnerships with construction firms willing to specify MykoFoam in real builds. The specific lead investor was not disclosed, though prior backers have leaned into follow-on participation through earlier rounds. The company says deliveries from its Portuguese plant will scale meaningfully through the second half of 2026.