Nūmi, an EIC Accelerator Winner, Grows Breast Milk in Bioreactors

Infant formula relies on cow's milk in 90% of cases, Nūmi's chief executive told NutraIngredients in 2025, and a cow's milk protein is not a human milk protein. Nūmi, the trading name of the French company MUMILK SAS, takes the opposite route: it grows human mammary cells in bioreactors and collects what they secrete. The CORDIS summary of its EIC Accelerator project calls it "the first European biotech company to produce human breast milk and its key components ex vivo", using 3D organoid culture of the cells.

The EIC selected the project, NumiMilk, for blended finance, and CORDIS records an EU contribution of €2,499,787.50 for a grant signed on 23 September 2026 that runs from 1 October 2026 to 30 September 2028. The project is one month old. What can be checked today is what the company has said it has built, what it has promised, and how far that is from a product a parent could buy.

A three-year-old company with two founding dates

The French register is clear on the legal entity. The national business directory's open data, updated on 3 November 2026, lists MUMILK as an active SAS created on 16 May 2023, classed under the manufacture of liquid milk and fresh dairy products. Its BODACC notices show the registration on 8 June 2023, changes to the share capital published in July 2023, December 2024 and October 2026, and annual accounts filed for 2023, 2024 and 2025. No insolvency notice appears among them.

The press is less consistent. FoodNavigator wrote in November 2023 that Nūmi was founded in 2022, while NutraIngredients and Green Queen give 2023. The register supports 2023 for the legal entity; no source explains the 2022 date. The name changed too: vegconomist reported in November 2023 that the start-up was previously known as MUMilk, which remains the registered name and the name on the EIC grant.

Its money is mostly not visible in the filings. The accounts were filed with a confidentiality declaration, according to BODACC. The directory's open data nonetheless list revenue of zero and a net result of minus €205,888 for 2025, without a balance sheet or staff figure behind them. No other financial data for MUMILK could be found.

Cells instead of fermentation

Nūmi defines itself against precision fermentation, in which an engineered microbe makes a single molecule. Eden Banon-Lagrange told NutraIngredients that fermentation "is limited to producing one constituent at a time", while Nūmi's method "leverages the full biological machinery of mammary cells". According to the CORDIS summary, the cells are grown as 3D organoids in bioreactors and the secreted milk is purified.

The cells themselves come from hospitals and lactariums, the human milk banks, according to Green Queen and the Italian outlet GreenMe. In November 2023 FoodNavigator reported that Nūmi had yet to file for intellectual property protection and was keeping technical details under wraps. By May 2025 the chief executive told NutraIngredients that the company had "successfully reproduced several key constituents of human breast milk" at lab scale and filed its first patent; it did not name the constituents, and no patent publication or scientific paper by the company could be found in the coverage reviewed.

The field has at least one retreat on record. Vegconomist reported that TurtleTree, a Singapore start-up, was previously developing cell-cultured human breast milk and shifted to precision fermentation of lactoferrin; FoodNavigator describes TurtleTree as making bovine lactoferrin by precision fermentation and names Pure Mammary Factors in the United States as another company using cell culture to develop human milk. How Nūmi's yields compare with any of them is not public.

What the EIC money is for

The EIC announced on 15 June 2026 that 38 companies had been selected from 87 interviewed, and its list of selected companies names MUMILK, NumiMilk, for blended finance. The EIC titles that file for its January to March 2026 cut-offs; the table this series works from files the award under the 6 May 2026 cut-off, and the CORDIS call code is HORIZON-EIC-2026-ACCELERATOR-02. Blended finance adds an equity investment by the EIC Fund to the grant, but no equity amount or date for Nūmi has been published, and CORDIS lists no total project cost.

According to CORDIS, the grant pays for scaling up upstream bioproduction, improving downstream purification, broadening the range of ingredients and moving to industrial-scale manufacturing. The first market is business to business: protein mixes and human milk oligosaccharide blends sold to formula makers, rather than a finished formula under Nūmi's own name. The company told NutraIngredients it also has sports and elderly nutrition in view.

1. Human milk constituents from cultured cellsLab scaleSeveral constituents reproduced, per the company in May 2025; none named, no data published.
2. Upstream scale-up50 litresReported by Green Queen and GreenMe in September 2026; no company release with yields found.
3. Industrial-scale manufacturingPlannedA September 2026 job advert describes a move "to first industrial batches".
4. B2B ingredient sales to formula makersNo customer namedThe company has announced no customer or supply agreement in the sources reviewed.

From 50 litres to "first industrial batches"

The clearest sign of progress is scale. Green Queen reported on 2 September 2026 that earlier in the year Nūmi had expanded in-house production to 50-litre bioreactors, and GreenMe reported the same step two days later; neither cites a yield, a titre or a cost per litre, and no release by the company itself could be found. A Head of Process Development advert posted on 8 September 2026 says the company is moving "from proof-of-concept to first industrial batches", gives 50 to 500 to 2,000 litres as an example of the scale-up experience it wants, and lists bioreactor sizing and the choice between an in-house facility and a contract manufacturer among the decisions the new hire will make.

The same month brought the second public award. Green Queen and FoodBev reported that Nūmi's Numindus project was selected under the France 2030 i-Démo programme for €3.7 million of non-dilutive funding, carried out by Bpifrance, for bioprocess scale-up, new milk bioactives and preparation for industrialisation. The EIC grant and the French award are separate instruments and are shown separately below.

The approval no one has yet

Whatever the cells produce, it cannot be sold in the EU without authorisation. The Novel Food Regulation covers "food consisting of, isolated from or produced from cell culture or tissue culture derived from animals", which requires a safety assessment before any sale. FoodNavigator reported in 2023 that Nūmi was expected to launch first in the United States, which Banon said "is more welcoming of innovations in this field"; GreenMe reported in 2026 that the company is designing its process with EU and US guidance in mind. The September 2026 job advert lists experience of an EU novel food dossier as a bonus. No novel food application by Nūmi and no US filing could be found, and the company has given no launch date.

Europe's stake is regulatory as much as industrial. The EIC is funding a company whose product falls under the novel food rules, so its route to the EU market runs through a safety assessment by the European Food Safety Authority, as GreenMe notes, covering the production process, composition, nutritional profile and allergens. Nūmi's description of itself as the first European company producing human milk components from cultured cells is the company's claim; no regulator has yet assessed its product.

Nūmi has not been asked for comment for this article. The reporting is based on publicly available sources, listed below.