Mykor, a Bristol company, raised £4m on Wednesday 27 May, led by the Clean Growth Fund with co-investors The FSE Group and Green Angel Ventures plus an Innovate UK grant, taking total funding to £7.5m1. Mykor grows structural insulated panels from engineered mycelium, the root structure of fungi, and agricultural waste. The panels, branded MykoSIP, carry 60% less embodied carbon than conventional insulation and a Euroclass B fire rating, the European standard for limited combustibility. Co-founders Olivia Page and Valentina Dipietro are Forbes 30 Under 30 honourees, and the company employs 22 staff.
The number that separates Mykor from most cleantech is the order book: £337m in pre-production commercial agreements signed with UK and European contractors2. That figure matters because it is signed before the first panel ships, which inverts the usual cleantech risk. Most materials startups burn capital proving a market exists; Mykor has booked demand and now needs to build supply. The £4m funds production capacity against contracts already in hand, not a hope that buyers will appear.
A Bristol firm with 22 staff is a different animal from a London AI raise, and that is the point. The regional, non-Golden-Triangle deeptech tier is alive, echoing earlier rounds outside the south-east such as Rivan's £25m for a synthetic-gas plant in Wiltshire and the regional life-sciences manufacturing sites the Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund backed in April. These companies raise from cleantech specialists and grant bodies, not the funds chasing the next billion-dollar AI label, which is exactly why the aggregate capital figures pass them by while the work goes on.
