Avolta has acted as sole financial advisor to Woodoo on its first round of outside capital, led by Lowercarbon Capital, the legendary US investor Chris Sacca’s multi-billion-dollar climate tech fund, along with Swiss-based investment firm One Creation, Laurent Ritter’s (Voodoo co-founder) venture arm Purple, other successful BAs and entrepreneurs, and institutional partners. The financing round totaled 31 million dollars with a mix of equity and non-dilutive instruments.
Founded in 2017 by Timothée Boitouzet, both an architect and a chemist, Woodoo’s disruptive technology takes local substandard (low-grade or even diseased ) wood feedstocks to transform them into premium high-tech materials, as alternatives to steel, concrete, aluminum, plastics, glass or even leather. The transformation takes place at the molecular level through lignin engineering.
Woodoo’s proprietary tech platform has already garnered attention from leading customers across three product lines: automotive, luxury and construction. The actual range of products includes smart surfaces and paneling, tactile interfaces, and « animal-free leather » goods.
This fundraising enables Woodoo to take on the construction industry next and to fully commit to its core mission to replace carbon-intensive legacy architectural building materials with carbon-negative inputs that are better, stronger, cleaner, cheaper and can easily be sourced. As a matter of fact, Woodoo has recently launched its second manufacturing site, with a current production capacity of 14,000 square meters a year and has entered into a commercial and technical partnership with Garnica, a European leader in industrialized wood construction.
As shortages of raw inputs and historic breakdowns in global supply chains are surging, Woodoo appears as a true game changer in one of the most CO2 emitting sectors, with a tremendous potential impact on the environment and climate change.
This deal consolidates Avolta’s leadership in sustainability-related businesses’ transactions, having recently advised Invers on its Series A led by IDIA Capital Investissement and Agri Impact (Citizen Capital), Jungle on its Series A led by Demeter and Founders Future, Weenat on its Series A led by IDIA Capital Investissement, Qarnot on its Series B with A/O Proptech and Casino, and Cityscoot on its Series B and C with Allianz, Demeter, LeasePlan, RATP, among many others.
