At Ferment, we believe that biotech has something to say about almost all physical good industries, not just therapeutics. We believe that industrial biotech is not a standalone market; it’s an enabling technology stack that’s already reshaping trillion-dollar industrial and consumer markets.
We look for entrepreneurs that are experts at translating biotechnology into problem-solving products and applications (which is very different from being an expert biotechnologist!) in markets they know intimately. When those entrepreneurs identify opportunities to be fast-to-product and start testing customer demand early, we pay attention. That’s exactly what we saw in Pegasus Materials.
We first met Pegasus Materials (then unnamed) two years ago, and were lucky to give founders Richard Pieters and Chris Schroder a place to build their NewCo concept before their first raise in Fall 2024. We’re excited to now join them as an official investor in this journey.
High-performance compute memory system demand (and prices) have exploded driven by demand in both datacenter servers and consumer devices. The newest iPhones are almost half as thin as the original, with massively more performance. The Department of Defense has begun 3D-printing parts to cut costs and lead times. And all of this modern hardware is pressing up against the performance limits of existing materials.
These technological advancements – and many more that our modern society depends on – are downstream of and dependent on material science innovation. When a company wants to create faster-transmitting memory systems, thinner electronics, or field-ready aerospace parts, they first must have access to materials that can provide the performance they need.
Pegasus Materials was founded to give them that access, developing new materials deliberately designed to satisfy the demanding performance specs of leading innovators and OEMs.
The Golden Age of Polymers in the mid-20th century produced a rapid run of breakthrough materials: polyethylene (1933), Nylon6,6 (1935), Teflon (1938), Polyurethane (1941), Acrylics (1944), Polypropylene (1953), Kevlar (1963), PEEK (1978) and many more. Each of these step-change materials enabled new applications from tupperware, to Lego, to computers, to mobile phones.
Unfortunately, this new material pipeline has since slowed to a crawl. The materials innovation powerhouses of the 20th century like GE Plastics, Sabic, and Dupont have largely exhausted what can be made from the same set of petrochemical building blocks.
Pegasus Materials was founded on the belief that we need a new set of chemical building blocks (or Lego set, as founder and CEO Richard Pieters often describes it) and that bio-based chemistries, often already produced at commercial scales, can provide that answer.
Founded by former DSM executives Richard Pieters and Chris Schröder, Pegasus combines biotechnology, traditional polymer chemistry, material science, and a deep understanding of customer material needs to develop new high-performance specialty materials.
At Ferment, we strongly believe that the key failure mode for industrial biotechs is to myopically focus on technical milestones at the expense of learning about customer needs, testing demand, and building commercial muscle.
Pegasus Materials flips the script. Start with the customer’s performance spec. Work backward to the material. And use bio-based chemistry to access the key combination of attributes.
In just over a year from its Seed funding in November 2024, Pegasus is now scaling not one but two novel materials in some of the most demanding applications in specialty materials. They’re starting with materials that enable slimmer USB-C connectors, high-speed memory modules for datacenter servers, and field-ready 3D-printed components.
Virela-X001
Connectors inside modern electronics are being pushed to new boundaries. As devices shrink and compute needs grow, USB-C and DDR connectors must deliver higher electrical performance while being molded into smaller, more precise geometries, and this combination is exposing the limitations of today’s petrochemcal-based materials.
Virela-X001 is being tested by major electronic component manufacturers for connectors used in consumer electronics, datacenter servers and high-performance computing environments. This 100% biobased material stands apart in two critical ways:
These properties give manufacturers a path to meet the next wave of performance and reliability requirements as interconnect hardware compresses in size while expanding in capability.
Virela-X002
Plastic 3D printing has long been limited by material shortcomings: weakness along certain axes, low temperature stability, and inconsistent mechanical strength that make printed parts viable for prototyping but not for actual production use. The gap between “printable” and “deployable” remains one of the biggest barriers to broader adoption in aerospace, defense, and industrial applications.
Virela-X002 is a thermocomposite designed specifically to close this gap. It offers:
Pegasus is working with aerospace and defense partners to evaluate Virela-X002 for field-ready components, where its blend of strength, heat resistance, and low weight could help shift 3D printing from an era of prototyping to production-grade use.
Pegasus Materials is developing better-for-the-product, better-for-the-planet materials. These are the beginning of a new pipeline of materials designed to meet the demands of our most important emerging technologies.
This speed of product development, scale, and launch is extremely rare in both industrial biotech and specialty materials. We are thrilled to be joining Richard, Chris and the Pegasus Materials team as they bring these materials to market and (hopefully) into products that we’ll all be using soon.
To learn more, visit the Pegasus Materials press release here.
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We have the capacity to create everything we need to flourish – from food to medicine to new materials. As we adapt biology with compassion and care, the future is waiting to be written.
Let’s grow a new world together.
We have the capacity to create everything we need to flourish – from food to medicine to new materials. As we adapt biology with compassion and care, the future is waiting to be written.
Let’s grow a new world together.
