The first time you touch the Sylvania version of the Hermès Victoria bag, the surface feels cool and dense, like a well-worn saddle. The grain is uniform but not synthetic, a perfect, deliberate topography grown in a tray of engineered mycelium cells in Emeryville, California. It was the culmination of a three-year collaboration, a proof point that a fungal biomaterial could meet the exacting standards of a house that sells a Birkin for the price of a car. For MycoWorks, the moment was everything. It was also not enough.
MycoWorks spent a decade turning an artist's fascination with fungal architecture into a luxury-grade material, raising over $225 million to do it. The bet was that by controlling mycelium growth at a cellular level, they could produce a material,Fine Mycelium,that was not just a leather alternative, but a superior, customizable product for the most discerning clients in the world. They convinced Hermès to use it in a bag, General Motors to explore it for car interiors, and investors like Prime Movers Lab to back a commercial-scale factory. Then, in October 2025, the company became insolvent and was liquidated. The story of MycoWorks is not just about a material science breakthrough, but about the immense gulf between a beautiful prototype and a viable business, a gap that even the most prestigious brand name cannot bridge.
The Artist's Material
The company's origin was not in a lab, but in an art studio. Co-founder Philip Ross had spent over 20 years working with mycelium as a sculptor, creating structures he called "mycotecture." His co-founder, Sophia Wang, came from the arts as well. Their founding insight was aesthetic and tactile: mycelium, the root structure of fungi, could be more than a chunky, foam-like substance. If you could guide its growth in three dimensions, you could engineer a material with the density, strength, and suppleness of top-grain leather. This was the genesis of Fine Mycelium, and later, the flagship Reishi material. It was a product born from a maker's sensibility, aiming for a feel that would satisfy a luxury artisan's hand. This heritage became a core part of the company's pitch,a decades-long material obsession, not a quick bio-hack.
The Luxury Wedge
MycoWorks did not try to compete on price with pleather or mass-market alternatives. Its wedge was quality, performance, and narrative. The company positioned Reishi as the first "made-to-order, natural material that compares in quality and performance to the finest animal leathers" [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. The sales pitch was one of upgrade, not substitution. For brands like Hermès, the value proposition was multifaceted:
- Aesthetic control. Fine Mycelium could be tuned for thickness, texture, and drape, offering designers a new, natural palette [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief].
- Sustainability story. The material is bio-based, grown in weeks, and carries a lower environmental footprint than traditional livestock-based leather.
- Exclusivity. By partnering directly with MycoWorks on bespoke developments, brands could own a novel material story.
The Hermès collaboration, resulting in the Sylvania bag, was the ultimate validation of this wedge. It proved the material could pass the most rigorous tests of craftsmanship and desirability [MycoWorks, March 2021]. A subsequent partnership with General Motors Ventures to explore automotive interiors for the Cadillac EV SOLLEI showed the material's potential beyond fashion, into another high-value, design-forward industry [vegconomist.com].
Scaling the Dream
With flagship partnerships in place, the next logical step was scale. In September 2023, MycoWorks opened what it called "the world's first commercial-scale Fine Mycelium plant" in Union, South Carolina [Specialty Fabrics Review, September 2023]. The facility was intended to supply "millions of square feet" of material annually to the fashion industry. This move from bespoke development to industrial production represented the company's biggest bet,that luxury demand would be sufficient and consistent enough to fill a factory. The $125 million Series C round led by Prime Movers Lab in October 2022, which brought total disclosed funding to over $225 million, was the fuel for this ambition [Preqin, October 2022].
The company's funding journey shows a steady climb toward this capital-intensive manufacturing goal.
Series A | Undisclosed | M USD
Series B (2020) | 45 | M USD
Series C (2022) | 125 | M USD
Where the Mycelium Thinned
The insolvency and liquidation in late 2025, followed by the closure of the Union plant, points to a fundamental miscalculation [Wikipedia, October 2025]. The risks were always present in the business model. Luxury fashion operates on limited runs and long lead times; a factory built for "millions of square feet" needs relentless, high-volume orders to survive. The pivot reported after the plant's closure,to sourcing third-party mycelium and processing it with a proprietary tanning technology called Rei-Tan,suggests the capital and operational intensity of growing the material themselves became unsustainable [mycostories.com, October 2025]. The science worked. The craftsmanship was validated. But the economics of building a new material supply chain, from cellular agriculture to finished good, against entrenched incumbents, may have proven fatal.
Competition was also intensifying. Bolt Threads (with its Mylo material) and others were chasing similar customers with similar sustainability stories. While MycoWorks had a head start with Hermès, the broader market for next-gen materials remained a challenging frontier, requiring patient capital and a tolerance for years of losses before reaching true scale.
The Unanswered Question
For a brief moment, MycoWorks answered a question that haunts every new material: will the luxury world accept it? They held a Hermès bag that said yes. The unspoken, cultural question they left behind is more poignant. In an industry built on legacy, heritage, and animal skins, is there room for a material that is both novel and natural, grown in a lab but meant to feel ancient? MycoWorks proved the desire was there, in the ateliers and design studios. The final, unanswered question was whether that desire could ever be met at the scale demanded by a factory floor and the investors who built it.
Sources
- [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief] MycoWorks engineered mycelium into Fine Mycelium
- [Specialty Fabrics Review, September 2023] MycoWorks opens world's first commercial-scale Fine Mycelium plant | https://specialtyfabricsreview.com/2023/09/21/mycoworks/
- [MycoWorks, March 2021] Hermès collaborates with MycoWorks on Sylvania material | https://www.mycoworks.com/
- [Preqin, October 2022] MycoWorks raises $125M Series C led by Prime Movers Lab
- [Wikipedia, October 2025] MycoWorks insolvency and liquidation | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MycoWorks
- [mycostories.com, October 2025] MycoWorks pivots to Rei-Tan technology after plant closure | https://mycostories.com/
- [vegconomist.com] MycoWorks partners with GM Ventures | https://vegconomist.com/
- [TheCompanyCheck] MycoWorks total funding of $225.3M across 7 rounds
- [Crunchbase] MycoWorks company profile and funding history | https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mycoworks