Halabé — Golden Spider Silk

Rarer than diamond,
stronger than steel

Trichonephila inaurata — known locally as the Halabé — is the only creature on Earth whose silk comes out gold. Weight for weight it reaches around five times the tensile strength of steel, and far outperforms it in toughness — the energy a fibre absorbs before it breaks.

Harvested without harm: spiders are collected, silked, and released alive.

No fermentation, no synthetic biology, no factory — the real material.

Every batch ever offered for sale sold out, even as prices rose.

The gold that was lost at sea

Bon de Saint-Hilaire presented the first treatise to the Académie des Sciences in 1709. Father Camboué revived production in Madagascar at the end of the nineteenth century. A bed canopy was bound for the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris — the ship sank off Madagascar, and the craft went down with it.

The last known owner of a golden spider silk piece was Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoléon III. For over a century the savoir-faire was considered lost. We brought it back.

We are halfway there

15,000 m

of golden spider silk already produced with our own machines and processes

€300 / g

reached at sale on past batches, with demand outstripping supply every time

400 spiders

proof of concept achieved: a colony of 400 spiders successfully reared in our own facility

MOF crafters

first pieces created with some of France's finest master craftsmen

Approaches made in 2020 to Kering, LVMH and Richemont. Kering signed a mutual NDA.

One material, four ways to sell it

Each stream stands on its own. The material is the base business; the rest are successive multiples on the same gram of silk.

The material

Raw golden spider silk sold by the gram to collectors, couture houses and laboratories. Demand is proven — every batch sold out.

Price achieved: €300 / g
Target cost at scale: ~€10 / g
At 200 g / month: ~€720K / yr of revenue

Jewellery

Collections of one-of-one pendants and brooches, every piece unique, crafted with master artisans. First pieces already made and sold.

All-in cost: €600–900
Sale price: €3K–6K
100-piece collection: ~€450K

Artworks

Major commissioned pieces created with France's finest craftsmen — one tribute to each Art, up to a patented violin whose sound exists nowhere else.

Cost per work: €15K–60K
Sold via: Galleries, auction

Digital editions

True to the essence of the medium: provably unique and born from the material itself — the sound of the spider-silk violin, works seeded by the exact gold of each batch.

Cost per edition: €5K–30K
Target proceeds: €100Ks

Cost and collection figures are targets at scale, not measured results. Prices shown were achieved on past sales.

€500K to bring the gold back

Minimum ticket — €200K

Élevage & production, Madagascar~50%

Jewellery & artworks~30%

Brand, distribution & editions~10%

Operations & IP~10%

Proven demand: every batch offered has sold, at €150–300/g

Four independent revenue streams on the same gram of silk

Exit path to luxury groups already aware of the maison

Two to three investors at most.

A proven builder, a passionate scientist

Jacques Lavie — Founder

Serial entrepreneur. Co-founded BnbLord, grown into the largest short-term rental operator in France and Portugal and acquired in 2019 by GuestReady, Europe's leading rental management group.

Today runs Lavie Maison and owns the ~70 serviced apartments it operates in Paris, Bordeaux and Nice, and is developing a portfolio of micro-hotel suites in Paris.

Laurent Berlioz — Head of Farming

Entomologist and arachnologist. Leader of the amateur arachnology community; created and operated a golden orb-weaver spider farm.

Rarer than diamond,stronger than steel