Biomatter raises $18M to scale AI-powered enzyme design in Lithuania

Biomatter, a Lithuanian biotechnology company specialising in AI-powered enzyme design, announced the closing of an oversubscribed $18 million Series A financing led by Astanor, with participation from existing investors UVC Partners, Inventure, and Metaplanet. 

Biomatter’s work is already in products, including Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Invitrogen™ SuperScript™ V Reverse Transcriptase, an enzyme used to convert RNA into DNA in molecular biology labs and mRNA research. Biomatter collaborated with the company to enhance the enzyme’s oxidation resistance, part of the reagent stability that supports ambient shipping and room-temperature storage for up to six months. 

New enzyme design and testing facility in Vilnius 

The financing will fund a new 2,000 m² (roughly 21,500 sq ft) design-and-testing facility in Vilnius, scheduled to open in 2027, which will bring more of the build-and-test loop in-house. According to Biomatter, conventional enzyme development can take months or years, while its programs take weeks. The new facility is intended to shorten these cycles to days. The round will also expand the commercial team and the company’s US presence, where roughly half its customers are based, and continue investment in the computational platform and the enzyme dataset behind it. 

AI-powered enzyme design for industrial biotechnology 

Biomatter designs enzymes from the target reaction, the chemistry a customer’s product needs, rather than from a starting natural enzyme and the natural data around it. That approach rests on years of generating its own enzyme data far from anything in nature, which is what lets Biomatter’s models make large jumps in sequence and structure. According to Biomatter, one program produced a methylase for mRNA vaccine manufacturing that works without SAM, an expensive additive every natural methylase depends on. The company describes this as enabling a chemical reaction not found in nature. Each design is tested in the lab before it ships. 

Biomatter has delivered more than 50 custom enzymes to more than 25 enterprise customers spanning Europe, the United States, and Japan. They include AstraZeneca, BASF, Kirin Holdings, Neogen, Sanofi, and Tereos, working across biopharma, diagnostics, agriculture, and industrial biotech. Several accounts have grown from a single project into multi-year, multi-enzyme programs. Each program also adds to a proprietary dataset of experimentally characterized enzymes that makes the next program faster and more accurate. 

Biotechnology in Lithuania 

Biomatter is part of Lithuania’s biotechnology sector, which combines molecular biology research, biomanufacturing and industrial biotechnology. Thermo Fisher Scientific carries out life sciences R&D and manufacturing in Vilnius, while Northway Biotech provides biologics development and manufacturing services. Lithuanian companies add specialised capabilities, including Caszyme in CRISPR gene editing and Pentasweet in precision fermentation for sweet protein production. Together, these activities illustrate the range of biotechnology expertise available in Lithuania, from research and enzyme design to commercial manufacturing. 

Recent investments are expanding this manufacturing base. In September 2026, Northway Biotech opened a €61 million cell therapy and personalised medicine centre in Vilnius, with 3,500 sq. m of space designed for up to 20 independent cGMP manufacturing lines. Pentasweet is also developing a brazzein sweet protein factory in Vilnius, with total investment expected to reach €65 million across two phases. Initial operations are planned for the first half of 2027, with around 30 highly skilled jobs expected. 

Biomatter’s planned Vilnius facility will add AI-powered enzyme design capacity to this growing biotechnology base, supporting the development of new products for international markets.