GALY, a plant-cell culture startup based in Brazil and Boston, USA, has raised $33 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round to advance its proprietary platform for cultivated cotton from lab to pre-industrial scale.

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Investments & Finance

GALY Raises $33M From Bill Gates’ BEV, H&M, and Inditex to Advance Climate-Resilient Cultivated Cotton

GALY, a plant-cell culture startup based in Brazil and Boston, USA, has raised $33 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round to advance its proprietary platform for cultivated cotton from lab to pre-industrial scale. Additionally, the funds will support expanding R&D efforts to improve the quality of “GALY Cotton” and develop other sustainable alternatives to traditional crop-derived commodities. The funding round was led by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), with participation from two fashion giants, H&M Group and Inditex. Other participants included Indorama Ventures, Endeavor Scale-up Ventures, and Unreasonable. Previous investors Material Impact, John Doerr’s family office (Eighty Eighty Group), Artesian, BRINC, and Reaction Global also backed the sustainable cotton, bringing GALY’s raised capital to $65 million. Luciano Bueno, founder and CEO of GALY, shared, …

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Investments & Finance

Inditex, Owner of Fashion House Zara, Invests in GALY’s Cultivated Cotton from Plant Cells

Spanish multinational clothing company Inditex, owner of Zara and Massimo Dutti, among other fashion brands, has announced a minority stake investment (the sum has not been disclosed) in GALY, a Brazilian and US biotech producing cultivated cotton from plant cells. GALY was founded in 2019 by Luciano Bueno, a former Deloitte executive. The startup has raised over $33.5 million from notable investors such as Sam Altman, former president of Y Combinator and current CEO of OpenAI, John Doerr from VC Kleiner Perkins, and investment funds such as Material Impact, Agronomics, and Brinc. According to Reuters, Inditex CEO Oscar Garcia Maceiras says the move aligns with the company’s goal of using 25% new-generation materials by 2030. Inditex has already invested in the sustainable material companies Findland’s Infinite …

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GALY to launch cultivated cotton

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Cultivated, Cell-Cultured & Biotechnology

Cultivated Cotton to Enter the Market for the First Time Ever

Cultivated cotton produced by US startup GALY is set to be used commercially for the first time, after the company signed a deal with Japan’s Suzuran Medical Inc. Suzuran will use the cotton — which is grown from cells in a bioreactor — to produce medical products such as gauze and absorbent cotton, along with sheets and cosmetic cotton. According to Forbes, thousands of tons of the cultivated fibers will be used each year. The partnership is worth $50 million and will run for ten years, beginning when GALY launches its first commercial facility; however, this likely won’t be for a few years. The agreement follows the success of a proof of concept completed by the two companies in 2021. GALY has also attracted significant …

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