Biosphere—a California-based startup developing UV-sterilized bioreactors it claims can slash biomanufacturing costs—has acquired the assets of defunct gas fermentation startup NovoNutrients.
Biosphere, which recently secured a grant from the US military to fund portable gas fermentation bioreactors for protein production, says NovoNutrients’ platform “plays perfectly into our active Department of War contracts and gives us a strong foundation with an established FEL3 [relatively advanced] design of a loop reactor pilot plant.
“By acquiring NovoNutrients, we gain access to world-class gas fermentation expertise and reactor technology without needing to divert R&D dollars towards establishing the core competencies associated with flammable feedstock handling, letting us effectively pursue a few processes of military interest,” Biosphere cofounder Brian Heligman PhD told AgFunderNews.
“The core assets we obtained with this acquisition are the years of operational data and process knowledge associated with designing and operating gas-fermenters, in addition to a robust strain bank of hydrogen oxidizing bacteria.”
UV sterilization could enable smaller, cheaper, bioreactors
While the NovoNutrients acquisition advances Biosphere’s work in gas fermentation, its core tech enables firms to ditch costly and complex steam-in-place sterilization systems whether they are using sugars or gases as feedstock, said Heligman.
“The majority of our internal R&D and product development is focused on establishing solutions for standard sugar-fed processes.”
For aseptic production, bioreactors are typically sterilized between batches using capex-intensive steam-in-place sterilization systems characterized by a vast array of pipes and valves, boilers, and a lot of water.
By killing contaminants with UV light instead, firms can reduce capex and maintenance costs, speed up the sterilization process, and develop smaller, more productive bioreactors unconstrained by steam sterilization protocols, he explained.
The business case for gas fermentation
According to Heligman, there are three core value propositions for gas fermentation—using gases instead of sugars as feedstock for microbes.
First, gas fermenters could “unlock the use of extremely low-cost resources like fossil methane for producing high-volume commodities that wouldn’t work economically from refined sugar feedstocks,” he said. “This could allow a player in the Middle East or Permian basin to upgrade their captive raw material into a higher value compound that isn’t accessible with traditional petrochemical refining, like protein or biopolymers.”
Second, gas fermenters could be used for waste remediation, he added. “Today, the vast majority of civil wastewater is decontaminated with aerobic bioreactors in municipal water treatment plants, but there’s an exciting frontier focused on expanding biotech’s potential to convert more complex waste streams like industrial pollutants into useful products.”
Third, he said, “Distributed or forward deployed applications as outlined in our $9 million military contract are a clear use case, producing critical materials at the point of need with readily available feedstocks.”
The cost and complexity of legacy biomanufacturing systems is the major constraint to practical deployment, claimed Heligman. “By simplifying production with our UV reactor architecture, we can reduce the scale required for economical facilities, unlocking streamlined deployment for distributed bioprocessing and reducing the payback period for large-scale production sites.”
He added: “The biggest impact will be realized by reoptimizing bioreactor designs under the expanded design space enabled by UV sterilization. Critically, we think driving up performance through focused innovation on intensified mass transfer is the most promising path for increasing efficiency. Integrating the engineering and design efforts established by NovoNutrients for their pilot-scale loop fermenters is a first step towards this long-term goal.”
A ‘shifting investment climate’
Founded in 2017 by Brian Sefton and Russell Howard, NovoNutrients is one of a small, but high-profile group of startups using gases instead of purified sugars to feed microbes that produce protein.
The firm, which raised an $18 million series A round led by Woodside Energy and CM Venture Capital in 2024, captured industrial CO₂ emissions and combined them with hydrogen to produce a protein ingredient called Novotein for aquaculture, petfood, and human nutrition markets.
In a LinkedIn post last July, former CEO David Tze revealed that the firm had entered the Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (ABC) process, which serves as an alternative to bankruptcy, but said he remained confident in the tech’s long-term potential: “The technology works. The challenge was capital intensity in a shifting investment climate.”
Further reading
Biosphere lands Pentagon funding to build portable “protein from air” bioreactors
Arkeon CEO delivers postmortem on ‘protein from air’ startup: ‘We just simply ran out of time’
