Epoch Biodesign closes $12M to prove its nylon recycling enzymes can work at scale

The London startup uses AI-engineered enzymes to break nylon 6,6 waste, from leggings to airbags to carpets, back into the monomers it was made from, recovering more than 90% and removing the need for virgin petroleum feedstock. Total funding now exceeds $50M.

Nylon 6,6 is one of the most useful materials humanity has ever made. DuPont scientists first synthesised it in the 1930s and it has been in continuous production ever since, used in everything from high-performance athletic wear to car airbags, climbing ropes, and industrial carpets.

It is also almost never recycled. The polymer’s structure, the same chemistry that gives it strength and heat resistance, makes it extremely difficult to break down without destroying the monomers you are trying to recover.

Epoch Biodesign, a London startup founded by Jacob Nathan in 2019, has spent six years engineering enzymes that can do exactly that. The company has now raised $12 million to move from pilot production to a demonstration-scale facility.

The round was led by apparel giant lululemon, with participation from Extantia, Happiness Capital, KOMPAS VC, Leitmotif, and others. It brings Epoch’s total funding past $50 million, following an $11 million seed in 2022 led by Lowercarbon Capital and an $18.3 million Series A in March 2025 led by Extantia, which also included Inditex, Zara’s parent company.

The investor list is notable for combining major fashion brands (lululemon, Inditex) with specialist climate investors (Lowercarbon Capital, Extantia): a signal that Epoch’s commercial proposition is credible enough to attract the companies that would actually buy its output.

The technology works through a cascade of enzyme treatments. Rather than using the full biological machinery of microbes, Epoch deploys only the enzymes themselves, sourced from industrial suppliers that already produce them at scale. Each enzyme in the cascade attacks a specific bond in the nylon 6,6 polymer, progressively breaking it down into its original monomers, principally adipic acid and hexamethylenediamine (HMDA).

A key commercial advantage is that the process handles mixed inputs. Epoch’s enzymes can work on blended textiles, coated fibres, and mixed plastic waste, material streams that conventional mechanical and chemical recycling processes cannot address.

This matters because the vast majority of discarded textiles are blended: a garment that is 60% nylon and 40% elastane is currently unrecyclable through standard channels. Epoch’s platform processes the entire bale and sorts the chemistry out at the molecular level.

The $12 million will fund a demonstration-scale facility near Imperial College London, which Epoch plans to use to validate commercial-scale output before building a full production plant. That commercial facility is targeted for 2028 and is designed to produce 20,000 metric tonnes of monomer per year.

In February, Epoch announced a partnership with Invista, the Koch Industries subsidiary and one of the world’s largest nylon 6,6 producers, to jointly develop post-consumer recycled nylon at commercial scale. 

The timing of the raise has an additional commercial rationale. The price of nylon 6,6 precursors has spiked by as much as 150% in recent weeks on a spot basis, Nathan said, driven by broader petrochemical supply volatility.

Epoch’s process, starting from waste textiles rather than fossil feedstocks, is structurally insulated from that volatility, a selling point that has become considerably easier to make in 2026 than it was in 2022.