Hamburg’s one.five Lands €14M to Slash Packaging’s 60% R&D Failure Rate
- ByStartupStory | January 19, 2026
one.five, the Hamburg-based startup revolutionizing sustainable packaging development, has secured €14 million in fresh funding to tackle the industry’s dirty secret: 60% of R&D prototypes fail due to material incompatibilities, regulatory blind spots, and scalability dead-ends before ever reaching production.
Founded by materials scientists Anika Voss and Lukas Brandt, one.five deploys an AI-powered platform that simulates real-world performance across 500+ variables – from recyclability scores to shelf-life under tropical humidity – condensing 18 months of physical testing into hours. Their digital twin tech ingests supplier specs, EU Green Deal mandates, and consumer brand requirements to generate failure-proof formulations already adopted by Nestlé and Unilever for next-gen mono-material bottles.
The capital – led by European cleantech heavyweight Atomico with participation from High-Tech Gründerfonds – fuels platform scaling to protein-based films and ocean plastic composites, targeting the €400 billion flexible packaging market where sustainability pledges crash against physics.
AI Fixes Packaging’s Innovation Bottleneck
one.five’s proprietary physics-ML hybrid predicts migration rates, barrier properties, and compostability certifications with 95% accuracy, slashing waste from discarded prototypes. At a time when brands face €1 billion annual R&D losses, €14 million positions Hamburg as Europe’s packaging AI hub, proving software finally tames materials science chaos and converts green ambitions into shelf-ready reality.
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