Vivici wins €12.5 million EU funding to scale cow-free whey proteins

Vivici has landed €12.5 million from the European Innovation Council, a funding package that pushes animal-free whey farther out of the lab and into the blunt economics of industrial production. The Dutch precision-fermentation startup said the award, split into €2.5 million in grant money and €10 million in equity investment, will help it scale the supply of its Vivitein ingredient line and expand market access. For a category still fighting for factory time, that matters more than any headline about hype.

The company said the money came through the EIC Accelerator Program, which it described as one of Europe’s most competitive innovation funding routes, with a jury interview and a crowded applicant pool standing between startups and support. Vivici received the award on June 17, 2026, after a year in which it had already been building a commercial case for fermentation-made dairy proteins, not just pitching a concept. Stephan van Sint Fiet, Vivici’s CEO, called the funding a “powerful endorsement” and said it showed Europe sees the chance “to turn the promise of precision fermentation into a commercial reality, at scale.”

That scale question is the real story here. Vivici was founded in 2023 with backing from dsm-firmenich Venturing and Fonterra, and it is headquartered in Oegstgeest, The Netherlands, with roots at the Biotech Campus Delft and a dairy protein application lab at NIZO food research in Food Valley. It has already commercialized Vivitein BLG, or beta-lactoglobulin, and earlier in 2026 launched Vivitein LF, its lactoferrin ingredient, in the United States with self-affirmed GRAS status. The new EIC cash is meant to widen the path from those early wins to repeatable industrial supply.

Vivici has been lining up that transition for a while. In February 2025, it raised a €32.5 million Series A led by Invest-NL and APG on behalf of ABP, with support from InnovationQuarter, DSM-Firmenich and Fonterra. By then, the company said it had already secured its first offtake agreements for beta-lactoglobulin and was planning a lactoferrin launch in the second half of 2025. It also said in 2024 that it had completed a successful tech transfer to a 120m³ fermenter, and in 2025 it ran its process in a 75,000-liter fermenter at Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant in Ghent, Belgium.

Chief Commercial Officer Simon Penfold said customer demand was already strong and that the new backing should help Vivici meet that demand with the supply and pace the market expects. That is the pressure point for fermentation proteins now: cost, capacity, regulatory rollout and customer adoption have to move together. Vivici is getting closer, and the latest EU funding suggests policymakers are treating cow-free whey less like a science project and more like infrastructure in the making.