SynMeta

SynMeta (贻如生物) is a synthetic-biology startup founded by Su Rui at the end of 2021 , developing 100% bio-based leather under the brand Mycel. The company uses fermentation to cultivate mycelium—mixing mushroom mycelium with waste fruit, such as the roughly 900 tonnes of cosmetically flawed fruit annually from Dole's Shanghai facility, to produce its material . Linear Capital led SynMeta's angel round in April 2023 and followed on in its Pre-A round in early 2024, with the latter tranche earmarked for building a phased factory in Changzhou and scaling commercial production of artificial leather . Su has described the past year as focused on cutting manufacturing costs across strain development, feedstock selection and fermentation methods to achieve cost parity against conventional materials in most use cases .