Bcomp's ladder from skis to Volvo and BMW interiors lands a $40M Series C

Flax-fibre composite materials — ampliTex fabrics and powerRibs reinforcement grids — that replace carbon and glass fibre in automotive interiors, motorsport bodies and sports gear.

That innovation-hungry niche sports and motorsport could fund the credibility needed until demanding road-car OEMs adopted flax composites at volume.

$40M Series C led by EGS Beteiligungen AG with new investors Verve Ventures, Zürcher Kantonalbank and RKKVC, plus re-ups from Generali, Airbus Ventures, BMW i Ventures, Porsche Ventures and Volvo Cars Tech Fund.

Materials engineer Christian Fischer met his co-founders during PhD studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, reinforcing balsa with flax fibres to build lighter backcountry skis. The dream was a ski company; inside the ski they found the actual innovation, and chose to refine and commercialize the material instead of launching a brand.

Bcomp built a supply chain and sold its cores into skis, then extended into racket and water sports, and used motorsport as its automotive showcase — Porsche Motorsport among the adopters — before breaking into standard car makers. Polestar, Volvo Cars and CUPRA became early OEM adopters, with CUPRA using the natural fibre composite for seats in the CUPRA Born VZ. The company turned sustainability into a sales weapon, running reverse-engineering comparisons that quantify each customer's CO2 savings, and built a highly automated pilot plant in Fribourg for thermoplastic powerRibs aimed at large-scale mobility production.

The pivot is a clean reversal of the founding plan: abandon the ski brand, sell the material — and the record shows the ladder working market by market.

Each rung is named and dated: racket and water sports, then Porsche Motorsport, then Polestar, Volvo and CUPRA, with volume production on the EX30 by April 2024.

The Series C is strategic rather than generic: the car makers' own venture funds financed the supplier they were adopting materials from.

The sustainability data practice — customer-by-customer CO2 comparisons and LCAs — is a repeatable mechanism other hard-tech sellers can copy.

A hard-tech startup can buy credibility market by market: sell first where specs fit on one page, then let each demanding customer vouch for the next, tougher one.

As of 30 January 2025, Bcomp described itself as firmly in scaleup phase, with three product lines (powerRibs, ampliTex, and thermoplastic powerRibs for large-scale mobility) and a highly automated Fribourg pilot plant. Its materials were in production vehicles including the Volvo EX30 and CUPRA Born VZ, and in BMW M4 GT4 racing parts. The company claims its automotive interiors cut plastic content by up to 70 percent, weight by up to 50 percent, and cradle-to-gate CO2 by up to 60 percent versus traditional composites.