From high school science project to $18.3M: AI-accelerated enzymes are coming for fast fashion’s plastic waste

A U.K. startup, originating from founder Jacob Nathan’s high school science project on using enzymes to break down plastic waste, has secured an oversubscribed $18.3 million in Series A funding. Founded in 2019 in London, Epoch Biodesign now a 30+ strong multidisciplinary team of chemists, biologists and software engineers. It will be using the new funding to scale up production of their plastic-eating enzymes. This means transferring the biorecycling process from the labs where they’ve been developing it to their first production facility this year, which he says will be able to gobble through 150 tonnes per year of waste once it’s up and running. Thereafter, the first production runs of commercial-scale capacity are expected by 2028 if not sooner, as Nathan says the startup is looking for ways to accelerate the scaling. They’ll be roughly doubling the size of the team over the next 12 months as they work on switching to a higher gear, he tells TechCrunch. Plastic not-so-fantastic ... Read full article.