This article is part of our Inno Awards feature. MycoWorks was honored under the material science category. Check out the other Inno Awards honorees here.
Mushrooms are known for their various gastronomic, medicinal and hallucinatory properties, but lesser known for their use in art and fashion.
For decades, Bay Area artist Phillip Ross has been experimenting with mushrooms, particularly reishi, as a medium. Some of his creations have been in the form of sculptures and furniture.
One of Ross’ relatively more recent projects is a startup that cultivates mushroom root systems, known as mycelium, for commercial uses called MycoWorks, which he co-founded eleven years ago with Sophia Wang, the company’s chief culture officer.
They met while Wang was working on a PhD program focused on epic poetry at U.C. Berkeley and Ross was curating an exhibit at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts that featured his mycelium objects. The exhibit, titled “BioTechnique,” debuted in 2007 and Wang was his intern on the project.
MycoWorks now manufactures mycelium-based materials that can be used as an alternative to leather and other plastic-based counterparts.
“We have been able to create a material that’s competitive with and comparable to animal hide. And then you have a wide range of responses,” Wang said. “You have people who are deeply in the leather industry who touch it and feel it, and they’re like, ‘this is this is something new’ — it feels alive, it feels natural, but it’s not leather, and that’s what’s very exciting and inspiring about it.”
On the other end of the spectrum, some people have an “I can’t believe this isn’t leather” moment, Wang said.
Investors clearly see its commercial potential and have poured around $225 million into the company. Major brands are already working with MycoWorks, too.
The company has collaborated with auto manufacturers such as Cadillac, luxury handbag designer Hermès and French furniture producer Ligne Roset.
Last year, Swedish fashion brand Deadwood Studios unveiled a line of ready-to-wear clothing and accessories that were made from MycoWorks’ reishi-based material. Items were priced beginning at around $550 for a vest and topped out at more $3,300 for a floor length coat. The entire line is sold out, according to Deadwood’s website.
Could a collaboration with the designer Telfar materialize in the future? Perhaps, Wang said.
Automotive giant General Motors is one of MycoWorks’ investors, as are celebrities John Legend and Natalie Portman.
And MycoWorks leased a 135,000 square foot manufacturing facility in South Carolina last year where it has started scaling up production of its material, which it calls “Fine Mycelium” and grows in the form of sheets.
“The next few years are really about commercial scale up and getting our material to volumes that then enable us to address the very large markets that we’re trying to target,” Wang said.
The goal is to jump from producing thousands of trays of mycelium sheets to millions of trays, Wang said, and eventually the company will look for additional manufacturing locations.
After producing sheets of its Fine Mycelium, the company sends the material to tanneries in Europe where they are developing new finishing techniques that are sustainable and free from harsh chemicals, and then transforming the material into something that folds, drapes and behaves in ways that appeal to designers.
“They’ve been extremely excited to be able to apply their expert knowledge in the long tradition of creating beautiful leather products to what is an entirely new, natural material at the cellular level,” Wang said. “We are exploring leather-like applications for this material but mycelium is not an animal cell. It’s neither plant nor animal. It’s its own kingdom.”
About MycoWorks
Location: Emeryville
Industries: Materials, manufacturing, sustainability
Founders: Sophia Wang, Phillip Ross
CEO: Matt Scullin
Founded: 2013
Funding: $225 million
Major investors: GM Ventures, Novo Holdings, DCVC Bio, Prime Movers Lab, Gaingels, Valor Equity Partners, John Legend, Natalie Portman
Why they were chosen: MycoWorks has developed a novel, sustainable material made from mushrooms that can be used in place of more resource intensive commodities like animal leathers and petroleum-based pleather. The company has already collaborated with brands across a variety of industries and is scaling up for commercial production.
