Green chemistry startup DUDE CHEM has closed a €6.5 million seed round to help drive the shift in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries toward sustainable, local production that is more cost-efficient. The funding round was co-led by leading venture capital firms Vorwerk Ventures and b2venture. Further investors include Frontline, Borski Fund, Auxxo, and Push Ventures. The company will use the funding to expand its team of experienced scientists and bring back the first product to secure the supply chain for one of Europe’s leading generic drug producers.
DUDE CHEM is an asset-light green chemistry company that supplies greener produced active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and intermediates – disrupting the €5.5 trillion global pharma-chemical industry and building the next generation of pharmaceutical production in Europe. The startup is utilizing a network of manufacturers for the next generation of pharmaceutical production in Europe, aiming to revolutionize the entire pharma-chemical industry – building on a strong momentum of bringing critical infrastructure such as medicine manufacturing back to Europe. As a virtual manufacturer, they supply chemicals manufactured in a greener and more cost-efficient way.
“Our ambition is to make Europe a major hub for chemical-pharmaceutical production again and secure critical infrastructure,” said Sonja Jost, co-founder and CEO of DUDE CHEM. “With our novel approach, we are able to demonstrate that by utilizing the innovation power of Green Chemistry, we can significantly reduce costs as well. We’re thrilled to contribute to a higher resilience of Western supply chains and support a sustainable reindustrialization.”
Based on its granted patent families in the field of greener production processes, DUDE CHEM’s approach is substantially more cost-effective and efficient than any other supplier on the global market, reducing waste by up to 70% with 40% less CO2 emissions than current best practices, while providing highest quality at the same time.
“DUDE CHEM uniquely combines deep chemical expertise with innovative technology to enhance environmentally friendly chemical production. We are happy to back such a skilled and passionate team,” said Dr. Dominik Steinkühler, Partner at Vorwerk Ventures. “Their proposition of repatriating supply chains at competitive costs while simultaneously diminishing the environmental footprint of chemical production is compelling.”
“I was very impressed by the DUDE CHEM team’s industry experience, deep scientific background and determination. The shift towards sustainability and environmentally-friendly practices is rapidly gaining momentum in the chemical industry, and in light of supply chain crises, there are strong incentives towards bringing critical infrastructure such as medicine manufacturing back to Europe,” said Anna Bosch, Principal at b2venture.
Berlin-based DUDE CHEM was launched in 2021 by a team with a strong scientific background and industry experience. With its roots in the scientific cluster of excellence in the field of Catalysis UniSysCat (formerly UniCat) at the University of Technology Berlin, DUDE CHEM’s technology is based on decades of research in European research institutes. The team is composed of leading scientists in green chemistry and chemical data science, who previously successfully developed and validated their green recipes on the market.
