Pre-Seed8 October 2026

Neela Biotech raises £2.1m in pre-seed funding to advance sustainable aviation fuel technology.

The financing round was led by Elbow Beach to support pilot-scale trials of the company waste-to-fuel platform.

£2.1MPre-Seed

Cambridge-based biotechnology company transforming organic waste into sustainable aviation fuel using artificial intelligence and microbial processes.

Cambridge start-up Neela Biotech has secured £2.1m in pre-seed funding to transition its artificial intelligence-guided waste conversion technology from laboratory testing to pilot-scale trials. The capital will be deployed at an operational biogas facility over the coming two years.

The financing was led by specialist climate investor Elbow Beach with a £2.1m total commitment that included contributions from Ascension, Cambridge Enterprise, and Ventures Together, alongside a group of strategic angel investors. Additional financial backing has previously been secured through Innovate UK grants, the Henry Royce Institute, and the IAG innovation programme.

Neela Biotech re-engineers anaerobic digestion infrastructure found across European biogas plants to convert agricultural, forestry, and food waste into fatty acids. This output serves as a scalable feedstock for sustainable aviation fuel, bypassing the limitations associated with scarce waste cooking oils and offering a viable pathway toward price parity with fossil jet fuel.

From the founder

"Most SAF today is made from waste oils and fats through HEFA. But the world burns 300 million tons of jet fuel every year, and there is simply nowhere near enough waste oil and fat to meet this demand. When Friederike and I founded Neela Biotech, we set out to make HEFA-SAF cheaper and scalable. Our Controlled Microbial Upcycling process leverages recent advances in AI-driven synthetic biology to convert diverse waste streams like food and agriculture waste into HEFA-compatible feedstocks. By integrating our technology with existing biogas plants, we can reduce capital requirements, accelerate deployment, and enable distributed, local production. The £2.1 million funding round, led by Elbow Beach, will help us scale towards our pilot and move us closer to making locally produced SAF cost competitive with fossil fuel."

Deepanshu Singh

CEO at Neela Biotech

Investor perspective

"Aviation’s fuel bill is only going one way, and the industry urgently needs alternatives that can scale commercially. Too much SAF technology solves for cleaner fuel without solving for cheaper or more available fuel, largely because it still depends on limited feedstocks like waste cooking oil. Neela’s approach is different as it builds on infrastructure that already exists across Europe, avoiding the capital costs that have held back other SAF players, while its low-energy process gives it a credible route to cost parity with fossil jet fuel. It’s that combination of capital efficiency and genuine potential for commercial deployment that convinced us to lead this round from pre-seed through to pilot."

Jonathan Pollock

CEO, Elbow Beach