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Capro-X
Biorefining building blocks for everyday life
Founded
2018
Employees*
2
Funding to Date*
$2,675,000
Website
capro-x.com/
* Data source: Crunchbase
Juan Guzman, PhD, founder and CEO of Capro-X
"We could park ourselves next to a co-packing facility where they're making yogurt one day, milkshakes the next day, and juice the day after—and upcycle all the liquid wastes into carbon-negative platform molecules."
The precision fermentation market is expected to grow from $2.5 billion in 2024 to over $24 billion by 2030.

Companies working in precision fermentation have ambitious plans to upcycle organic waste, but most struggle with high costs and poor scalability. They rely on a few engineered bacterial strains and must operate in short batches to keep them healthy and productive. That means stopping and restarting their bioreactors frequently, which introduces downtime and a higher risk for contamination.

Capro-X has pioneered a “microbiome refinery” that uses hundreds of bacterial species in a single fermenter to produce one highly targeted end product. The company’s novel continuous extraction technology enables continuous fermentation of waste into upcycled products for years on end. Currently, Capro-X upcycles acid whey, a difficult dairy byproduct from Greek yogurt production, into caproic acid, a platform molecule used in animal feed, fragrances, flavors, cosmetics, textiles, bioplastics, and more. 

Normally, caproic acid is derived from palm oil, an industry that drives rainforest deforestation. Capro-X not only eliminates the need for palm oil but also fixes 9.3 tons of greenhouse gases per ton of caproic acid. Thus, the company addresses three environmental challenges simultaneously.

Capro-X founder and CEO Juan Guzman, PhD worked at startups upcycling algae and brewery waste into biofuels before developing the microbiome refinery during his PhD at Cornell University. With the technology to upcycle a variety of wastes, Capro-X is at the forefront of making precision fermentation cost-effective and scalable.