Second Edition of The Future is Fungi Award: Applications Opening Soon
- Marc Violo
- 8 hours ago
- 9 min read
Interview with Susanne Gløerson, founder of The Future is Fungi Award
What inspired you to create The Future is Fungi Award?
For 15 years, I’ve been on the barricades of sustainability, working within the capital system to enable a transition to a more regenerative future. Then fungi found me — and I discovered how this extraordinary kingdom and queendom of life can help solve some of our greatest and systemic environmental challenges, and enable a future where fungi help rewrite our systems to be regenerative by design.I also saw how untapped and underleveraged fungi remain. Mycology is the last frontier in biology — a new biotech revolution — yet fungi have long been underfunded, underrecognized, and overlooked in the innovation landscape.
Despite fungi’s very nature as a network, fungal innovations lacked a unified global innovation ecosystem to back them. There was no dedicated platform to support science entrepreneurs and startups with the resources, capital, awareness, and partnerships they need — or to weave corporates, scientists, investors, and innovators together to help these solutions commercialize and scale. Further, I saw that several breakthrough fungal innovations than can help solve our pressing challenges never leave the research institute.
That’s why I founded The Future is Fungi Award with the mission to:
Create a platform that accelerates fungal innovations worldwide and unlock and speed up their true potential to solve urgent environmental challenges as a new frontier in biotech
Do this by backing pioneering startups and science entrepreneurs that are paving a new way, supporting them with funding, networks, knowledge, and recognition.
To convene a global ecosystem across corporates, investors, and researchers who can help these solutions advance and scale.
To inspire new groundbreaking fungal research and innovation sparking the “fungal moonshots” we have yet to imagine.
To raise awareness and momentum for fungi as a pathway to a more sustainable, regenerative future.
Basically to accelerate the fungal revolution.For me, this is all about moving to a more nature aligned and regenerative system. The award and my work is also very inspired by biomimicry. Fungi can show the way.
The award is also part of a bigger mission I´m building, to be a cohesive global engine and launchpad for gamechanging fungal innovations worldwide. Think of it as the X Prize meets the Nobel Prize for fungi innovation — with the backing of an IndieBio/Y Combinator incubator/accelerator to help these breakthroughs reach daylight and scale.
What gap or need in the fungi innovation ecosystem does this award aim to fill?
Fungal innovations have significant potential, but there are structural barriers holding it back. That’s exactly the need The Future is Fungi Award is designed to fill. The award is designed as an innovation platform to give fungal innovators a launchpad for their innovations and the unified ecosystem they’ve been missing: connecting scientists, startups, corporates, and investors. It’s about providing not just capital, but know-how, partnerships, cooperation, entrepreneurial learning and recognition to help move game-changing fungal innovations out of the lab and into the real world, and then to help them scale.
How do you define the purpose and mission of the award in a few words?
Our mission is to accelerate fungal science and innovations into revolutionizing planetary solutions. The award is part of a bigger vision, to be a global engine and launchpad for gamechanging fungal innovations worldwide, while also weaving together the ecosystem that makes scaling possible.
I founded The Future is Fungi Award to unleash the fungal biotech revolution. By backing scientists and entrepreneurs with resources, networks, visibility and capital, we’re building a global ecosystem for fungal innovation. Think Nobel Prize meets Y Combinator.
The Future is Fungi is more than an award. It’s a global movement to unlock fungi’s potential for system change.
4. Looking back, what stood out to you from the first edition of the award?
What really stood out from the first edition was the excitement, the community, the sheer global response and the incredible innovations applying. We had 257 applications from 70 countries, which blew us away, and the diversity and frontierness of the fungal innovations we saw was just mind-blowing, from fungal batteries to self-healing materials. These innovations, highlighted by the ones making it to the top of the award, really shows just how far fungi can push the boundaries of sustainable innovation.
We also gathered an incredible network around the award, 57 jury members including representatives from the European Innovation Council, ETH Zurich, Stanford, and top investors such as European Circular Bioeconomy Fund and Northzone. The winners and the award itself received recognition far beyond what we imagined: featured twice in Nature Biotechnology, presented at IMC12 conference for 1,400 people, and the award was even nominated for The Earthshot and Food Planet Prize. That kind of validation showed us the world is ready for fungi.
So, who were the winners and what made their projects exceptional?
Winners -- In the science category, Jens Laurids Sørensen from Aalborg University in Denmark won for developing a fungal battery prototype, a completely novel way to store energy sustainably and a mindblowing example of the potential of fungi.In the startup category, we actually had two winners: Novobiom in Belgium, a fungal biorefinery startup turning waste such as textiles into valuable new materials (such as bioactive compounds for cosmetics, they have been in L´Oreals accelerator), they are also remediating polluted soil. And MycoMine in Sweden, remediating polluted water for hydrocarbons. Mycoremediation is one of the great examples of how we can leverage fungi`s natural capabilities in nature as cleaners and decomposer,and regenerating old into new, waste into value. These are exactly the kinds of groundbreaking solutions fungi can unlock.
Runner-ups -- We also had some incredible runner-ups, who made it to the top 3 from more the 257 applications! Scientist William Newell from Imperial College of London impressed us with his research on electromicrobial CO2 fixation. I.e how CO2 can be extracted out of the air with the use of electricity, turned into a liquid acid that the fungi can consume, and the fungal biomass can then be re-used for jet fuel, materials and feed. Third place science team from University of Berkeley transforming textile waste into new mycelium composite materials.The startup runner is also a true powerhouse, Visibuilt from Denmark with the impressive founder Line Kloster Pedersen is replacing bitumen in asphalt production with fungi as a binder. Incredibly novel!
For me though, the award is not only about the ones coming to the top. If we’re going to transition to a regenerative future, we need all fungal innovators in. And the first edition of the award really proved that there’s a global movement.
What kind of benefits did the winners receive, beyond the recognition itself?
For the first award, the winning startup and scientist received EUR 10 000 grant each, access to a mentorship pool to support them and broad recognition and visibility. The innovators making it to the top were among other featured in Nature Biotechnology, The Microbiologist, invited to speak for 1400 people at the opening of the IMC12 conference as well as several podcasts (including The Future is Fungi Podcast). They have also found funder leads, hires, leads for customers through the award and the network.
What can we expect from the second edition? Any new focus areas or selection criteria?
In the second edition, we’re really stepping up the game to back bold and pioneering fungal innovators worldwide.
For startups, the winner will receive a €250,000 ecosystem investment to accelerate their journey. The top three startups will also gain access to a world-class expert network — including leaders from L’Oréal, Novonesis, BASF, DSM Firmenich, Stanford, and VTT — plus global visibility through getting featured in the Fungal Award Hall of Fame.
For science entrepreneurs, the top five will be invited into a three-month venture program designed to help them bring their innovations from lab to market, in partnership with a leading biotech venture-builder. They’ll also connect with the same expert network, receive international recognition, and the winner will receive a financial prize, which we’ll announce in December, so stay tuned!
We’re also proud to bring together an eminent jury this year, including some of the world’s leading biotech investors, such as MIT’s investment arm The Engine, Novo Holdings and others.
Applications open September 10th for startups and in December for scientists — so we’re calling all fungal innovators to join us!
Are there particular sectors or applications of fungi you hope to see represented this year?
I’m a fan of all fungal innovators, we truly need them all. But what excites me most is when we see the frontier: ideas so novel they open up entirely new categories. Part of the magic of the award is being surprised by innovations we hadn’t even imagined before, like the fungal battery or asphalt binder in our first edition.
That’s why I don’t want to limit it to a specific sector. My hope is to see mind-blowing solutions that show us new ways fungi can help us solve global environmental challenges, and, in the process, spark creativity and imagination for others to think “what more an we use fungi for” and then go out and innovate new game changing innovations. I would love to see fungi as a biosensor in the ground to survey the biodiversity status in the soil.
What are you personally most excited about as this edition unfolds?
What excites me most about this edition comes down to three things.
First, we can now truly support pioneering scientists in bringing their innovations from lab to market. With the new venture program, five science entrepreneurs will learn how to build companies around their discoveries, which has always been the vision of the award.
Second, I’m thrilled that we can back startups with significant capital. The winning startup will receive €250,000, and we’re exploring additional investments for the runners-up and third place. So private investors interested to join these investments, get in touch with me! This kind of backing can really accelerate their journeys.
And third, I’m excited about the incredible global network we’ve assembled — from top tier corporates to research institutions. For these innovators, access to expertise, know-how, and potential partners and customers is just as important as funding, and now we can give them both.
On top of that, I feel deeply grateful for our board, advisory board, jury, philanthropic supporters, and partners. This is truly an ecosystem effort.
How do you see the award shaping the future of fungi innovation?
The Future is Fungi Award together with the broader organization we’re building is designed to catalyze fungal innovation worldwide. By providing funding, resources, and a supportive ecosystem, we can help pioneering entrepreneurs take their discoveries from lab to market, breakthroughs that might not happen otherwise. We want to help catalyze the new frontier of fungal innovations. And to help fungal startups to scale.
Beyond the award, we’re building complementary initiatives like The Fungi VC and the Fungi Investment Collective. These bring dedicated capital and investor networks, helping to scale innovations. Through these initiatives, the organization becomes more than a prize, it’s a platform for commercialization, scaling, collaboration and ecosystem building to advance the field.
Ultimately, The Future is Fungi Award and the organization is the global go-to-place for fungal innovation, the hub where scientists, startups, corporates, and investors come together to accelerate the next generation breakthroughs.
What impact do you hope this award will have on the broader bioeconomy?
The Future is Fungi Award can expand the bioeconomy by unlocking fungi’s full potential as a platform for sustainable innovation. By funding early-stage startups and helping scientists commercialize breakthrough research, it brings new bio-based solutions to market, from materials, agriculture and more. The result is a stronger, more diverse bioeconomy where fungi play a central role in driving circularity, reducing emissions, and creating regenerative industries of the future.
If you could give one piece of advice to start-ups or researchers applying for this year’s award, what would it be?
Show us the frontierness of your innovation. The award is here to help you commercialize or scale, so don’t hold back—share your biggest ambition and how your innovation can change the world. If you are a science entrepreneur, show us clearly your motivation to commercialize your research for real world impact.
Where do you envision The Future is Fungi Award in five years?
In five years, The Future is Fungi Award (X Prize for fungal innovation) is part of the larger global platform organization with a key mission to catalyze cutting-edge fungal innovations worldwide. It is a world leading global launchpad for fungal innovators and science entrepreneurs worldwide, a mycelial engine turning breakthrough fungal discoveries into real-world impact and helping startups to scale. By then, we have helped numerous science entrepreneurs bring innovations from lab and into a startup through our venture programmes, we have backed the world's leading fungi startups with capital that boosts their journey, and due to The Future is Fungi, novel innovations that would otherwise not see daylight is creating system change across sectors.
It is also an established network organization that through weaving the world's leading corporations, scientists, startups and investors together for partnerships, pilots, knowledge sharing, resources and cooperation have advanced and accelerated numerous fungal innovations across sectors for impactful scale. We have also collectively addressed bottlenecks in the fungal ecosystems that make innovations scale faster. We are working closely together with other ecosystems such as Mycostories to collectively drive fungal innovations globally.
By 2030, The Future is Fungi is part of defining the global fungal innovation landscape. Alumni of the award are market leaders driving change in the bioeconomy, paving a new way toward a regenerative future fuelled by fungi.