Golden spider silk is the only material in luxury nobody controls yet. We farm the spider that makes it, we have sold every gram we ever produced, and this round funds the one thing that has stopped everyone before us: the minutes.
labor per gram, by hand today and at the end of the automation ladder
reached at sale on past batches; every batch sold out
spiders reared in our own facility, the proof of concept
of global luxury already at the table (names and dates in the investor file)
plan-case revenue in 2031, 72 % gross margin, $2.7M EBITDA
Figures are in euros with US dollars at $1.15 per euro. Every assumption below is explicit, and those that are not measured are flagged as such. Founders: Jacques Lavie (co-founder of BnbLord, acquired by GuestReady in 2019; owner of the ~70 serviced apartments Lavie Maison operates in France) and Laurent Berlioz (entomologist, founder of insect-rearing companies, author of our rearing protocol, will run the farm).
It takes roughly eight hundred reelings to obtain one gram of silk. This is not an estimate: Simon Peers measured it on his own project, six hundred to eleven hundred spiders per gram; the Oliver Hoare catalogue corroborates it at twenty-three thousand spiders per ounce; our own internal calculation gives seven hundred and thirty-five.
We have timed both gestures: one minute to feed an individual, ten minutes to reel it. Multiplied by eight hundred, that is a hundred and forty-seven hours of human work per gram. No spider farm has ever survived that arithmetic.
That is the only reason this market is empty. It is not a biology problem (rearing, we know how to do) and it is not a demand problem (every batch sold out). It is a problem of minutes. Why now: the automation it takes has matured elsewhere. Insect farming has fed, sorted and handled live animals at industrial scale for a decade, and that is the trade our co-founder comes from.
| Stage | min / reeling | h / gram | Direct cost | Capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Today, entirely by hand | 11.00 | 147 | €2,567/g ($2,950) | ×1 |
| 24-post reeling frame | 1.42 | 19 | €331/g ($380) | ×8 |
| + automated feeding | 0.57 | 8 | €132/g ($152) | ×19 |
| 48-post frame + automated handling | 0.26 | 3 | €60/g ($69) | ×42 |
None of this is an invention. The reeling prototype exists and draws a continuous thread without breaking it; what remains is to multiply it by twenty-four, then forty-eight. Feeding is two thirds of the time left once the frame is in place, and it is a problem insect farming solved at industrial scale a decade ago. Direct cost includes loaded technician labor at €17.50/h, live prey and the rearing share of the premises. Both the rearing protocol and the reeling process are patentable; the filing program is funded by this round.
The plan takes the top of the defensible ranges; the floor takes the bottom of the same ranges. Both rest on the same farm, the same frame and the same five people. Only prices and pace change, and each gap between the two columns has a public comparable.
| At the 2031 horizon | Plan | Floor |
|---|---|---|
| Average price of a jewellery piece | €25,000 ($28,750) | €10,000 ($11,500) |
| Pieces per year | 90 | 50 |
| Average price of a work | €180,000 ($207,000) | €80,000 ($92,000) |
| Works per year | 6 | 4 |
| Grams produced | 300 | 140 |
| Labor ceiling at 5 FTE (g) | 424 | 424 |
| Revenue | €3,330,000 ($3.83M) | €870,000 ($1.0M) |
| EBITDA | €2,381,600 ($2.74M) | €319,600 ($368K) |
| Return on €500K for 25 %, at a financial exit of 4.2× revenue | 7.0× | 1.8× |
Comparables: Hemmerle averages $25,900 a piece on the secondary market; Carpenters Workshop has a €38,000 entry ticket; three hundred grams stays below the labor ceiling computed above. The 4.2× multiple is a financial buyer's price. It is not the exit we are building toward, and section 7 explains why a strategic buyer prices this company differently. The floor case is EBITDA-positive from 2029 and is what the round is sized on.
We size the raise on the floor, not on the plan. Rebuilding the colony and standing up the frame takes twenty-four months; we sell nothing before that, and the plan funds it.
| 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reeling posts | 1 | 12 | 24 | 24 | 48 |
| Produced (g) | 0 | 40 | 80 | 110 | 140 |
| Jewellery / works sold | 0 / 0 | 8 / 1 | 25 / 2 | 40 / 3 | 50 / 4 |
| Revenue | €0 | €155,000 | €400,000 | €625,000 | €870,000 |
| Cost of sales | €0 | €50,000 | €122,500 | €190,000 | €245,000 |
| Gross margin | €0 | €105,000 | €277,500 | €435,000 | €625,000 |
| Payroll | €139,400 | €139,400 | €139,400 | €167,400 | €167,400 |
| Operating costs | €64,600 | €79,500 | €109,000 | €126,000 | €138,000 |
| EBITDA | −€204,000 | −€113,900 | €29,100 | €141,600 | €319,600 |
| Capital expenditure | €95,000 | €65,000 | €20,000 | €35,000 | €30,000 |
| Year-end cash (€500K raise) | €201,000 | €22,100 | €31,200 | €137,800 | €427,400 |
first year at operating break-even, in the floor case
gross margin once production is running
cash low point at a €500K raise, end-2028: three weeks of operation
of cumulative floor-case revenue over five years
The silk is never sold raw: a gram sold loose brings €300, the same gram set in a jewel is worth €12,500 ($14,400), so all production goes into pieces and the year-end reserve (22 → 74 g) is the buffer that lets us honour a commissioned work without interrupting jewellery. The cash low point is the real subject of this raise, and the reason the round is presented as a floor and a plan.
€1.5M pre-money, €2.0M ($2.3M) post. Funds the colony, the premises, the 12-post then 24-post frame, the patent filings and twenty-four months of payroll. Cash low point €22K at end-2028: the plan holds, with no room for slippage.
Use of funds: payroll 47 %, machinery and automation 27 %, premises, energy and consumables 15 %, intellectual property and regulatory 6 %, commercial 5 %. The two founders draw €2,000 net a month each.
Same €1.5M pre-money. The extra €370K does three things: it brings the 24-post frame forward from M+24 to M+12, adds a technician in 2028, and takes the cash cushion from three weeks to well over a year, which absorbs a six-month delay on the colony, the likeliest risk.
Bpifrance, the French public investment bank, typically tops up a round of this size with a low-interest loan, which is not counted here.
Instrument: priced equity in the French company (SAS), or a BSA-AIR, the French equivalent of a SAFE, for investors who prefer it. A Delaware parent is possible if the lead requires one. The round closes with two or three partners; there is no minimum ticket.
| 2027 | 2028 | 2029 | 2030 | 2031 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reeling posts | 1 | 12 | 24 | 24 | 48 |
| Technicians (FTE) | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 |
| Produced (g) | 0 | 40 | 80 | 110 | 140 |
| Transformed (g) | 0.0 | 28.4 | 64.0 | 98.0 | 128.0 |
| Year-end reserve (g) | 22 | 34 | 50 | 62 | 74 |
| Direct cost (€/g) | 2,567 | 1,127 | 771 | 468 | 359 |
Floor-case volumes. The table can never consume more than it produces; the reserve is not dormant stock, it is what lets a house built on a rare material take a commission.
The great houses have spent the last fifteen years buying the top of their own supply chains, precisely so that nobody else can: LVMH took 80 % of Loro Piana in 2013 for about €2 billion, and with it the vicuña and baby-cashmere supply, after buying the Heng Long crocodile tannery (2011) and Tanneries Roux (2012). Hermès bought the Annonay (2013) and Le Puy (2015) tanneries and took stakes in crocodile farms. Chanel assembled Paraffection (Lesage, Lemarié, Massaro), bought Barrie cashmere (2012) and the Bodin-Joyeux lambskin tannery (2013), and took a stake in the Cariaggi cashmere spinner with Brunello Cucinelli (2022). Kering bought the France Croco tannery (2013).
None of those were priced on the supplier's EBITDA. They were priced on what exclusivity is worth to a house that sells a €4,500 stole or a €10,000 bag. Golden spider silk is the only material on earth whose production nobody holds yet, four groups have already come to ask for it, and the raise funds the only thing between them and a supply: the farm. The unique pieces and the exhibition are not the business; they are how the material becomes famous before the sale. The 4.2× revenue multiple in section 3 is the floor on that exit, not the plan.
Who has already asked, without names (they are in the investor file): one group approached us to source the material and received us at its métiers innovation site in 2024; one arranged a meeting with its fibre house, which saw a strong match for jewellery; the chief executive of a third told us a flagship brand would be interested on one condition, a water-resistant finish, now a six-month milestone; the fourth signed a mutual NDA in 2020 and its high-jewellery house took a spool.
Luxury is the road that pays for the farm. The farm is also the only source of native spider silk at any scale, and native silk has done things in the literature that no recombinant protein has matched. None of it is funded or priced in this plan; all of it uses the same spiders.
Conduits of native spider silk have reconstructed long peripheral-nerve defects in published clinical work, with no adverse reaction to the implant: the furthest-advanced medical use of this material.
Braided native silk reaches more than twice the tensile strength of nylon suture with no loss over 1,000 fatigue cycles; native dragline seeded with fibroblasts and keratinocytes has grown bilayered skin. Spider silk carries no sericin, the coat that makes silkworm silk immunogenic.
Dragline silk guides light to 1,400 nm and has been used to build fibre-optic chemical sensors; weight for weight it reaches around five times the tensile strength of steel and far outperforms it in toughness.
A decade of recombinant spider-silk ventures produced protein, not thread: the fermentation route never reached the fibre's native properties. The farm route does, because the spider does the spinning. Scaling the farm is the only path that has not been tried.
This is the big version: a farm that holds, at a cost per gram below €60, is a supply for every one of these, and the IP program funded by this round covers the two processes that make it possible.
The colony was dispersed and the premises given up in April 2026. The first six months are a restart, not a start: this is built into the timetable and the cash plan.
| Milestone | Deliverable | Success criterion |
|---|---|---|
| M+1 | Metrology | 0.1 mg analytical balance; the entire historical stock weighed |
| M+3 | Colony repurchased, premises equipped | Five hundred individuals in individual rearing |
| M+6 | Yield measured | Milligrams per spider per reeling, over a hundred individuals |
| M+6 | Water-resistant finish | Hydrophobic coating trial on native thread: lustre and hand preserved, water resistance validated, the condition one group set for a flagship brand |
| M+12 | Twelve-post frame in service (24-post at $1M) | Under two minutes of labor per reeling |
| M+18 | F1 → F2 cycle closed | A captive-born generation reaching maturity |
| M+24 | Twenty-four-post frame, first pieces | Forty grams produced, eight jewels and one work delivered |
The M+6 milestone matters most: until the mass yield per spider is measured, no capacity projection has any value. It gates everything else, and it costs less than two thousand euros.