Dutch Startup Grows Wood Without Cutting a Single Tree — and Investors Are Taking Notice
Wageningen, Thursday, 4 June 2026.
A Wageningen biotech startup has raised €2.1 million to produce wood from tree stem cells in bioreactors — up to 10,000 times faster than conventional forestry, potentially saving 2.1 gigatonnes of CO₂ annually.
A Funding Round That Signals More Than Money
On June 3, 2026, Wageningen-based DeepTech startup New Dawn Bio announced the close of an oversubscribed €2.1 million pre-seed funding round — a milestone that carries weight well beyond its headline figure [1][2]. The round was led by CapitalT, with participation from Norrsken Evolve, Ontdekkers Group, and a cohort of angel investors that includes Jelle Prins, co-founder of the AI-driven protein design company Cradle [1][4]. The oversubscribed nature of the raise — meaning investor demand exceeded the original target — points to a level of conviction in the cultured wood concept that is rare at such an early stage [1][2]. This is not a consumer app or a software-as-a-service play. This is deep biotechnology, requiring years of laboratory work before a product reaches the market. That investors lined up to fund it speaks volumes about the growing appetite for bio-based material innovation.
What Exactly Is New Dawn Bio — and Who Is Behind It?
New Dawn Bio is a biotechnology startup founded in 2024 and headquartered in Wageningen, the Netherlands [1][2]. The company was co-founded by Tom Clement, who serves as CEO, and Kianti Figler, who serves as COO [2][4]. Wageningen is home to Wageningen University & Research, one of the world’s leading institutions in life sciences and agri-food technology [GPT], making it a fitting launchpad for a venture that sits at the intersection of plant biology, materials science, and advanced manufacturing. This is an agritech and biotech innovation — one that draws on the principles of cellular agriculture (most commonly associated with lab-grown meat) and applies them to an entirely different domain: timber [GPT]. The startup describes itself as developing the world’s first cultured wood, a claim that, if borne out, would represent a genuine first in the history of materials production [1][2].
Growing Wood in a Bioreactor: How the Technology Works
The process New Dawn Bio has developed is conceptually elegant, though technically demanding. The company harvests stem cells from living trees — cells that retain the biological capacity to differentiate and grow — and then multiplies those cells inside bioreactors, which are controlled environments that mimic the conditions needed for cellular growth [2]. Rather than simply producing undifferentiated cell mass, the technology guides the developing cells into specific shapes, meaning wood can be grown directly into its intended final form, whether that is a beam, a panel, or another structural configuration [2]. This eliminates several steps that are fundamental to conventional woodworking — the felling of trees, the transportation of logs, the milling of round trunks into rectangular boards — all of which add cost and generate waste [2]. As CEO Tom Clement noted on June 3, 2026: ‘Wood has been a pinnacle to mankind for millennia, yet we still haven’t figured out a better way than to cut rectangular boards and beams from round tree trunks. For the first time in history, we can now grow pre-shaped premium wood’ [1].
The Numbers Behind the Promise
The performance claims attached to New Dawn Bio’s technology are striking. According to the company, its bioreactor-based production process can grow wood up to 10,000 times faster than conventional forestry [1][2]. That figure alone challenges the assumption that biological processes are inherently slow. On the cost side, the startup claims its method can cut production costs by up to 80% compared to traditional timber production [1]. The environmental case is equally compelling: New Dawn Bio states that its approach could save up to 2.1 gigatonnes of direct CO₂ emissions annually [1][2]. To put that number in context, 5.3 million hectares of tropical forest are lost every year under current practices, contributing significantly to global carbon emissions [2]. By removing the need for logging entirely, cultured wood could relieve pressure on natural forests at a time when deforestation remains one of the most urgent drivers of biodiversity loss and climate change [2][GPT]. The company’s R&D team brings together expertise from plant biotechnology, biopolymer engineering, bioinformatics, bioprinting, and additive manufacturing, drawing on talent from institutions including Harvard Medical School, the University of Amsterdam, and ETH Zurich [1].
Research Backing and the Road Ahead
New Dawn Bio is not operating in isolation. The startup is a participant in the Eurostars-funded BRANCH project, a European research collaboration that includes the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) as a partner [1][2]. The Eurostars programme, which is co-funded by the European Commission and EUREKA member countries, supports research-driven small and medium enterprises developing innovative products and services [GPT] — a designation that aligns closely with New Dawn Bio’s current stage of development. The €2.1 million raised in the June 2026 pre-seed round will be deployed toward two primary objectives: advancing the product development of cultured wood and expanding the company’s interdisciplinary R&D team, which spans cell biology, materials engineering, physics, and process engineering [1][2]. The company is also leveraging artificial intelligence to accelerate its research and development pipeline [2]. Janneke Niessen, founding partner at lead investor CapitalT, described the rationale for backing the company on June 3, 2026: ‘New Dawn Bio represents exactly the kind of deep-tech, impact-driven company CapitalT exists to back. Tom and Kianti have assembled a world-class team tackling a problem that is both massive in scale and largely overlooked. Cultured wood has the potential to transform entire supply chains while making a meaningful contribution to the planet’ [1].
Why This Matters for Industry and the Planet
Wood is one of the most widely used materials in human civilization — integral to construction, furniture, packaging, and countless manufacturing processes [GPT]. Yet the supply chain that delivers it remains fundamentally unchanged for centuries: trees are planted, grown over decades, felled, transported, and milled, with significant material lost at every stage [2]. New Dawn Bio’s cultured wood approach, if successfully scaled, could decouple that supply chain from the forest entirely. The implications extend across multiple industries. In construction, pre-shaped wood components could reduce both material waste and on-site manufacturing steps [2]. In manufacturing, the ability to produce tunable wood materials — wood whose properties can be adjusted at the cellular level — opens possibilities that conventional timber simply cannot offer [2][GPT]. The oversubscribed pre-seed round closed in June 2026 is, by any measure, just the beginning. The real test will come as New Dawn Bio moves from laboratory-scale demonstrations to commercially viable production volumes — a transition that will require not only scientific achievement but also the kind of sustained capital and partnership support that its current investor base appears ready to provide [1][2].