Anzen secures seed funding

UK ‘deeptech’ start-up Anzen Industries has secured a $2.2 million pre-seed investment led by LocalGlobe and Creator Fund. This will mainly be used to will build its first biomanufacturing facility in the US, where it is shifting its operations.

“Once built, the new US facility will manufacture high-value, critical molecules used as active ingredients in cosmetic, fragrance and food products, as well as providing solutions for critical minerals processing,” Anzen stated. It also intends to explore new industrial collaborations and partnerships as it scales. 

Anzen was co-founded by CEO Amy Locks and Pedro Lovatt Garica. It combines proprietary enzyme reactor technology, immobilisation techniques and AI design with the aim of “engineering molecular resilience so that complex chemical manufacturing can be more efficient and cost effective, getting products to market quicker”. 

The firm’s ultimate vision is to use AI to discover the 99% of naturally occurring, bioactive molecules that are not currently used in industry and carrying out manufacturing cell-free. “If enzymes can be kept robust outside of the cell, we can carry out the same manufacturing reactions at a fraction of the infrastructure, energy and cost,” Lovatt said.