Glaia
Glaia is commercialising a disruptive photosynthesis enhancement technology capable of increasing crop yields and reducing the carbon footprint of agriculture.
Photosynthesis is the main bottle neck in agricultural production as yields have been optimised through nutritional inputs and high-tech systems to its biological limit, i.e. the photosynthetic limit. This problem has been tried to tackle via GM for decades, with no success.
Our technology is the first one to increase photosynthesis effectively and it is the active ingredient of our biostimulants that can be applied to any crop and gets taken up via the roots or the leaves. It is a carbon-based material that, due to its unique physical properties, directly interacts with the photosynthetic processes inside the plant, increasing their efficiency.
2019
Start Date
Bristol
Location
4
Employees
£210k
Grants
£1.5m
Equity
The Journey
Glaia was incorporated in 2019 and in 2020 we received the first funding (IUK ICURe grant + private funding) to take the technology out of the lab and into commercial validation.
Since then we’ve been through another funding round of £1.4M (equity) to de-risk the technology regulating the product in the UK and the NL, develop an industrial manufacturing process for the active ingredient and engage with grower trials.
Our next steps are securing a Seed round of £3.5 M (£1M IUK pre-approved + £2.5M equity) to de-risk the market and prepare for a Series A in 2026 to scale-up the company and international expansion.
Contact Form
Patent Filed
Company Incorporation
Validation
1st Commercial Project
What companies had to say about the Innovate UK ICURe programme?
"The findings from over 150 conversations and various activities were presented to a panel of experts who advised that the most appropriate commercialisation strategy was to establish a commercial vehicle (a spin-out) to exploit the underlying intellectual property, with Innovate UK in effect providing pre-seed capital to accelerate the development and growth of the company"
Dr David Benito
CEO at Glaia
Future Goals
Glaia is the revolutionary technology developed at the University of Bristol that allows plants to harvest light more efficiently and facilitates the processes involved in biomass production resulting in increased crop yields. With this technology, we aim to effectively help ensure food security in the future as well as reduce the carbon footprint of agricultural food production.
Glaia’s mission is to unlock global food production one crop at a time, enabling more sustainable agricultural practices and reducing the CO2 emissions esteeming from this sector.
All crops photosynthesise and our end goal is to make Glaia’s technology available for all crops, enabling more sustainable food production while increasing profitability for growers and making agriculture part of the solution to help stop climate change.