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UK Startups and Innovation
14JUN

Mykor's £4m grows panels from mushrooms

3 min read
16:35UTC

Bristol's Mykor raised £4m on 27 May to grow building panels from mycelium, with £337m in orders signed before the first panel ships. Demand proven ahead of production, the opposite of most cleantech risk.

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Key takeaway

Mykor booked £337m in orders before shipping a single panel, inverting the usual cleantech risk.

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 £7.5m 1. 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 contractors 2. 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.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Most building insulation, the material packed into walls to keep heat in, comes from mineral wool (rock or glass fibres) or plastic foam. Both require energy-intensive industrial processes to make, which creates carbon emissions before the building even opens. This is called 'embodied carbon'. Mykor grows its panels from mycelium, the root-like network of a fungus, combined with agricultural waste like straw or husks. The mycelium binds the waste material together into a rigid panel. Growing the panels uses far less energy than manufacturing conventional insulation, so the embodied carbon is roughly 60% lower. The fire rating matters because buildings have to pass fire safety tests; Mykor's panels have achieved a Euroclass B rating, which means they meet the standard required for most commercial and residential construction. The £337m in pre-production agreements means large building contractors have already committed to buy these panels once production scales up, before the first production line reaches full volume.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

UK construction's embodied-carbon problem persists for two reasons operating at different speeds. In the short term, procurement departments at large contractors price on upfront material cost rather than whole-life carbon cost, because planning and building regulations do not yet require embodied-carbon reporting.

Mykor's pre-production agreements are an early signal that the 2025 Future Homes Standard consultation, which proposed mandatory whole-life carbon assessments, is already shifting contractor behaviour ahead of legal requirement.

In the medium term, the clean-build materials market lacks a domestic institutional anchor comparable to Longwall for deeptech. The Clean Growth Fund, which led Mykor's round, is the primary UK-domiciled cleantech early-stage vehicle at this cheque size. Innovate UK grant co-funding supplements equity but does not replace it. The result is a concentration of supply: if Clean Growth Fund's follow-on appetite changes, Mykor's next round has limited alternative domestic leads.

What could happen next?
  • Opportunity

    The £337m pre-production pipeline, if it converts at standard construction industry lead times of 2-4 years, would take Mykor from a £7.5m funded startup to a company with material revenue comparable to its total funding raise, without requiring additional equity.

  • Risk

    Installer-skills gaps for biogenic panel systems could delay conversion of the pre-production pipeline; the Ecovative precedent shows 4-6 year lags between signing and volume delivery for novel materials.

Sources:Tech Funding News
Mentions:Innovate UK →Life Sciences Innovative Manufacturing Fund →Wiltshire →Rivan →Forbes →Dell →London →Mykor →
First Reported In

Update #6 · Orbital's $50m has no UK lead

Tech Funding News· 29 May 2026
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Causes and effects
Caused by
Rivan raises £25m for Europe's biggest SNG plant
Rivan's £25m cleantech raise in Wiltshire (ID:2702) showed regional, non-Golden-Triangle deeptech capital continues to flow outside AI; Mykor's £4m Bristol raise echoes that pattern.
Occurred 20 Apr 2026
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This Event
Mykor's £4m grows panels from mushrooms
A Bristol cleantech raise with orders booked pre-production shows the regional deeptech tier the AI mega-rounds skip is alive and selling.
Led to
Gigaton lands $26m for plant autonomy
UK climate hard-tech finding capital at earlier stages (Mykor £4m in May) preceded Gigaton raising at a more advanced revenue stage.
Occurred 3 Jun 2026
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Different Perspectives
European VC (Atomico, Plural, Highland Europe as PhysicsX / Lumen adjacents)
European VC (Atomico, Plural, Highland Europe as PhysicsX / Lumen adjacents)
European growth funds have backed three of the week's largest UK rounds via follow-on positions and co-investments; the PhysicsX cap table includes Atomico (European-domiciled, Skype-founded) and Siemens (German industrial), both returning investors who view UK physical-AI as a supply-chain multiplier across Continental manufacturing. European LP capital is filling the growth tier UK state vehicles have not yet reached.
UK regulated-industry coalition (Lloyds, BAE Systems, LSEG via Lumen Sovereign)
UK regulated-industry coalition (Lloyds, BAE Systems, LSEG via Lumen Sovereign)
Thirteen of Britain's most heavily regulated companies backed Cosine not as a philanthropic gesture but to acquire a data-compliant AI tool that replaces costly US API alternatives; each partner provides proprietary data in exchange for early access. Their participation signals that regulated incumbents, not venture funds, may be the structural customer base that sustains the UK's sovereign model tier.
US growth investors (General Catalyst, Intrepid Growth Partners)
US growth investors (General Catalyst, Intrepid Growth Partners)
US and allied growth investors followed Temasek into PhysicsX's Series C; General Catalyst also returned in the round after backing Geordie the previous week. The absence of any US-led domestic-capital equivalent is a structural reading: American funds enter at growth stage where returns are clearest, ceding seed and Series A economics to UK vehicles that are themselves contracting.
Temasek (Singapore sovereign fund)
Temasek (Singapore sovereign fund)
Temasek led PhysicsX's $300m Series C, its second major UK deep-tech cheque in six weeks after co-investing in Isomorphic's Series B with the SAIU; its thesis runs through Southeast Asian advanced-manufacturing adjacencies, not bilateral UK policy. Singapore's sovereign capital is now the default lead for British scale-ups above £200m that fall outside the BBB's priority sectors.
UK Government (DSIT / Liz Kendall)
UK Government (DSIT / Liz Kendall)
DSIT published its first sector scorecard on 10 June setting a £8.3bn 2025 baseline, and the Sovereign AI Unit's compute allocation enabled Cosine's Lumen Sovereign launch. The scorecard's own barbell figure, more capital in fewer rounds, exposes the policy gap DSIT has not yet addressed: no instrument currently leads venture rounds in industrial AI simulation sectors.
Spanish state finance (COFIDES, CDTI)
Spanish state finance (COFIDES, CDTI)
Spain's COFIDES and CDTI have co-invested alongside UK deep-tech rounds in prior cycles and track the British Business Bank's direct-investment activity as a benchmark for state-capital deployment in innovation. BBB's two direct co-investments in one week set a pace reference for Iberian equivalents.