Today0.5 t/haWild plant, fibrous and heavily branched roots
Naraxa
Pioneering Sovereign Natural Rubber
A new, resilient pillar of global natural rubber supply, grown from dandelion in temperate climates.
Why natural rubber matters
A critical raw material without a synthetic substitute
Over 50,000 products rely on natural rubber and demand keeps growing with transportation and the shift to EVs.
15+ Mtused worldwide each year
$30B+global market
100%imported by the EU and NA
The Problem
Natural supply is threatened, and at risk of being wiped out altogether
One tree species, a handful of countries, a growing deficit, EU deforestation rules and the constant threat of fungal blight.
01 · Geopolitics
Supply chains on the brink
Europe and North America import 100% of their natural rubber, shipped from a handful of countries, while the production deficit keeps growing.
100% import dependentLong global routes
Our vision
Natural rubber that is sovereign, resilient and built to scale
Sovereign
Grown close to the industries that depend on it, free from long and fragile supply chains.
Resilient
Keeps critical industries running, from defence to healthcare, when global supply is disrupted.
Scalable
Harvested every year by machines, with breeding cycles measured in years, not decades.
Our crop
Natural rubber from dandelion roots, not trees
Breeding in months, not decades
A short life cycle lets us improve yield every 8 weeks, where rubber trees took a century for a few breeding cycles.
A better material
More than a drop-in replacement: rubber with up to twice the polymer length of tree rubber, and a lower allergy risk.
Rubber in the roots
Rubber makes up 3–20% of the root’s dry weight and is harvested by machine like other root crops, with no hand tapping.
Scaling
From a small wild root to a crop built for industry
We're turning wild rubber dandelion into a true crop, with bigger roots, more rubber and uniform plants that farmers can harvest with existing machinery.
Next milestone1.5 t/haRubber trees parity, from a single taproot
Target3 t/haTwice the yield of rubber trees, with chicory-sized roots
Figures show natural rubber yield in tonnes per hectare per year. Milestones are targets.
Our technology
Domesticating dandelion in years, not centuries
We build on a decade of breeding progress and combine genomics and machine learning, multiplexed genome editing and advanced tissue culture to turn wild dandelion into a high-yielding rubber crop, faster than conventional breeding ever could.
01Our high-yielding plant varieties
We start from elite lines built on a decade of breeding, already far ahead of wild dandelion.
02Finding the targets that matter
We are building a digital workbench for dandelion that brings genomics, single-cell sequencing and machine learning together to pinpoint which genes to edit next.
03Editing multiple traits at once
Our genome editing toolkit improves several traits in one step and can rewrite entire stretches of DNA.
04From cell to plant, fast
We prototype edits directly in fast-growing roots within weeks and then grow the best candidates into complete plants from a single cell.
Meet the team
Rooted in science, grown to scale
Our team brings together industry strategy, plant biotechnology and data science to turn dandelion into a crop industry can rely on.
Samuel joined Naraxa from BCG, consulting for aerospace & defence companies. He holds a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Cambridge.
René worked on rubber dandelion as a postdoc at Stanford University before co-founding Naraxa. He brings a background in plant biotechnology and holds a PhD from the Max Planck Institute in Germany.
Cedric has a background in mathematics and data science and has since turned his focus to the intersection of biology and computer science. As Naraxa’s founding engineer, he connects the wet and dry lab through lab automation, multi-omics data integration and machine learning.
Help us build the supply chain that does not exist yet
Investors, farming and extraction partners and researchers: we would like to hear from you.
contact@naraxa.com