Courtesy of Bolt Threads
Bolt Threads CEO Dan Widmaier and English fashion designer Stella McCartney stand between two models whose brown knitted pieces were fashioned from the startup's synthetic spider silk material.
- Bolt Threads is a biotech company based in Emeryville, California, that produces sustainable materials to supply the apparel industry.
- Among these materials are a synthetic spider silk called Microsilk, developed without the help of spiders, and a newly-announced synthetic leather material called Mylo derived from the root structure of mushrooms.
- The company's mission and materials have garnered attention from the fashion industry and landed it partnerships with brands such as Patagonia, Best Made and Stella McCartney.
The production of Bolt Threads' synthetic spider silk material has nothing to do with actual spiders.
The venture-backed biotech startup launched in 2009 and specializes in the vegan material, dubbed Microsilk, which has landed the Emeryville, California, company on the map in recent years.
CEO Dan Widmaier and a team of fellow scientists studied how spiders make silk to try and replicate that process using DNA samples similar to that of the arachnids. The silk fibers that spiders make are durable, soft, and can withstand a high degree of tension without breaking, similar to steel.
To Widmaier and his team, it was the perfect source of inspiration for a sustainable material derived from "four billion years of life on this planet," a focal point in the company's mission statement. With the textile industry being the second-largest polluter on the planet next to oil, there's always room for innovation of new materials.
Since Microsilk's debut, Bolt Threads has received $213 million in funding and has catapulted into a comfortable limelight in the apparel and tech industries. Business Insider visited the company's Emeryville location to catch up with Widmaier about Bolt Threads' latest developments, including a partnership with English fashion designer Stella McCartney and a new synthetic leather material produced from the roots of mushrooms.