Why BMW iVentures invested in Natural Fiber Welding

About BMWi Ventures

BMW i Ventures focuses on BMW’s current and future business in the technology and service space.

• Mountain View, California, United States
• 11-50
• Corporate Venture Capital
• Debt, Early Stage Venture, Late Stage Venture, Seed, Venture
• www.bmwiventures.com

About Natural Fiber Welding

Natural Fiber Welding develops a circularity platform producing sustainable materials from plants.

• Peoria, Illinois, United States
• 101-250
• Undisclosed
• Private
• www.nfw.earth

Our Investment in Natural Fiber Welding

Unveiling Natural Fiber Welding

We’re thrilled to announce our investment in Natural Fiber Welding’s (NFW) financing round.    NFW has formulated a unique process to incorporate various plant matter into a “dough,” which can then be shaped, tuned, and processed into a 100% natural and fully recyclable alternative material to leather, textiles, and foams.

This fundraise will enable the Company to scale up its production from batch processing to roll-to-roll commercial capacity.

Our investment reinforces our commitment to purpose-driven entrepreneurs and underscores our efforts to advance the decarbonization of the automotive industry.

Impact on the Automotive Industry

Leather has remarkable characteristics (durability, resistant to abrasion, color fading, etc.) that make it an ideal material to use in a large variety of products, from footwear and apparel to accessories to car seats.

However, traditional leather production is quite problematic and can be very harmful to the environment.

Petrochemical-based leather alternatives often do not have the same premium look and feel and while the CO2 footprint is better, they are still oil-based and very hard to recycle.

While there is a burgeoning ecosystem of startups making alternative leather using a variety of technologies (e.g. mycelium-based, recycled leather, specific plant-based, lab-grown), they all have shortcomings in one (or more) of the following areas:

1. Perform comparably to leather (durability, resistance to abrasion, color-fastness, etc.).
2. Cost-competitive to existing leathers (i.e. animal or synthetic leathers).
3. Scalable to produce meaningful volumes for a number of customer verticals, particularly automotive.
4. Environmentally friendly with minimal carbon footprint.

Expansion Plans

NFW so far is the only company that checked all the boxes. This fundraise will support the Company’s scale up from batch processing to continuous roll-to-roll production as NFW brings its sustainable materials to the market.

Conclusion

With this investment, we are incredibly excited to join other sustainability focused corporations, such as AllBirds and Ralph Lauren, that are backing NFW on its mission to produce all natural alternative materials.

You can read the rest of “Why we invested in” collection here:

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