Featured in Impact Loop
The Future is Fungi Award was recently featured in Impact Loop — Sweden’s leading impact media platform for investors, corporates, and organizations in the sustainability and impact space. The article features the Future is Fungi Award and highlights the 187 startups from 59 countries pitching their fungi-based innovations to a prestigious jury that includes representatives from MIT’s The Engine, EQT, and Stanford.
🔗 You can read the original article in Swedish here: Impact Loop – Fungitävling lockar 187 svamp-bolag: "Världen håller på att vakna upp till svamparnas förmåga”
Below you find an English translation of the article:
Fungi Competition Attracts 187 Mushroom Companies: “The World Is Waking Up to the Power of Fungi”
October 17, 2025 — Impact Loop
In The Future is Fungi Award, 187 companies are currently pitching their fungi-based innovations to a jury that includes representatives from MIT’s investment arm The Engine, EQT, and Stanford.
“The world is waking up to the power of fungi to drive the next industrial revolution,” says founder Susanne Gløersen.
After a long career in sustainability and finance, including roles at Nordea and SEB Green Tech, Susanne Gløersen is now working to build a global ecosystem for fungi-based innovation. She is the founder of The Fungi Investment Collective for private investors as well as Fungi VC, the world’s first venture capital firm entirely focused on fungi startups.
This year, she is gathering the industry around the latest edition of The Future is Fungi Award.
“This award exists to support the boldest visionaries — those who show how we can use nature itself to create the solutions humanity needs, enable a more regenerative system, and pave the way for fungi innovations the world has never seen before,” says Gløersen.
The competition features 187 startups from 59 countries, presenting innovations spanning fashion, construction, agriculture, electronics, and household products — all using fungi as a key material or process.
Fungi also offer powerful solutions to some of our biggest environmental challenges, from carbon capture and mycoremediation to new biomaterials, green chemicals, and energy storage.
Previous award winners have developed fungi-based bio-batteries for sustainable energy storage. Companies like Novobiom and MycoMine use fungi to clean contaminated soil and water through mycoremediation.
The Danish startup Visibuilt, which took second place in a previous edition for its fungi-based bitumen alternative for asphalt, was recently featured in Times Square after being listed by Norrsken as one of the world’s 100 most promising impact startups.
The winner of this year’s competition will receive an investment of €250,000 (approximately 3 million SEK) and support from an expert network including L’Oréal, Novonesis, BASF, and Stanford University — organizations leading in biotechnology, sustainability, and innovation.
Winners will be announced on November 25.
Susanne Gløersen, founder of The Future is Fungi Award and The Fungi Investment Collective. Press photo.
