Your Challenge:
ENGINEERING MICROBIAL CONSORTIA
Hello, innovators!
We need breakthrough innovations to orchestrate microbial communities with AI and shift chemical manufacturing beyond fossil fuels. We need circular biomanufacturing platforms and the mastery to control living complexity.
We need you.
UNLOCKING ROBUST BIOMANUFACTURING WITH AI AND MICROBIAL COMMUNITIES
Most industrial chemicals and materials remain dependent on petrochemical feedstocks, locking modern manufacturing into non-renewable resources and high-volume greenhouse gas emissions. Biomanufacturing offers a sustainable path forward, but current approaches have hit a ceiling. Single-strain monocultures largely depend on highly refined, uniform feedstocks that cannot be supplied in sufficient volume to replace petrochemical production at scale.
Nature solves this through multi-species microbial communities — consortia capable of digesting crude, variable feedstocks and executing multi-step chemical syntheses beyond the reach of isolated strains. So far, leveraging complex consortia meant inviting unpredictability and control failures that bioengineering couldn't solve.
THE OPPORTUNITY: Emerging AI models, real-time sensing, and high-throughput automation are enabling engineering pathways previously thought impossible. By coupling predictive modelling directly to active bioprocess control, we can turn wild cellular teams into observable, controllable precision factories — accessing low-cost, minimally refined feedstocks at industrial scale.
This SPRIND Challenge is funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN) through its digitalisation initiative to close material cycles, part of the action programme implementing Germany’s National Circular Economy Strategy (NCES).
The Challenge: Developing robust biomanufacturing processes with Microbial Consortia and AI
The goal of this Challenge is to develop new kinds of robust, circular, end-to-end biomanufacturing processes for sustainable chemicals and materials using fermentation with microbial consortia. These processes will be continuously optimized and actively controlled through AI-supported Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL) cycles. As these processes mature, they could turn waste streams and future feedstocks made from captured CO₂ into useful chemicals and materials, improving resource efficiency and helping close material and carbon cycles.
Robust processes must deliver consistent, reliable production even as feedstocks vary, operating conditions shift, or chemical transformations generate toxic intermediates. We are calling for fully integrated manufacturing systems that unite feedstock preparation, biological conversion, active process control, product recovery, and formulation where needed. Teams will use AI/ML models to make quantitative predictions and enable closed-loop process control.
We support:
Potential breakthrough innovations
The Challenge spans up to 38 months across three competitive stages. A jury of internationally recognized experts supports SPRIND in evaluating and selecting participating teams.
With funding from BMUKN, SPRIND provides direct financial backing through individual fixed-price contracts based on team cost estimates, offering up to €4,300,000 per team across all three stages. In Stage 1 (14 months) up to €1,200,000 per team, in Stage 2 (12 months) up to €1,300,000 per team and in Stage 3 (12 months) up to €1,800,000 per team.
To ensure teams reach their full potential, SPRIND also provides fully funded Shared Services (including consortium preservation, quality control, data development, and independent robustness evaluations) that are not charged against team funding caps. Throughout the Challenge, SPRIND offers operational coaching, access to collaboration partners, and matchmaking sessions with investors and industrial off-takers.
The Competition
Detailed information can be found in the call for submission and the participation agreement.
Participate
The application period runs until November 16, 2026, at 11:00 (CET). All applications submitted by this deadline will be considered.
Webinar
Learn more about the Engineering Microbial Consortia Challenge in our webinars. The following dates are scheduled: October 12, 2026, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (CEST) and November 3, 2026, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (CET). Further details will follow shortly. Follow our LinkedIn channel for regular updates.
FAQ
Do you have questions about the Challenge? Contact us at challenge@sprind.org.
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