Anna Rising started with 100 spiders caught in the wild in South Africa. More than 20 years later, Rising, professor of veterinary medical biochemistry at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and biochemist Benjamin Schmuck use microorganisms to produce textile fibres from biomimetic artificial spider silk.
On 22 October, their company ArtSilk was named one of 10 winners of the Global Change Award 2026. H&M Foundation runs the award as an annual innovation programme. Each winner receives EUR 200,000 and a place in the one-year GCA Changemaker Programme, which the foundation runs with Accenture, KTH and The Mills Fabrica.
The grant pays for the step from fibre in kilogram quantities to yarn, textile prototypes and industrial production. In May, the Uppsala lab installed a multifilament spinning machine that spins several thin fibres into yarn at once. The next step is sample material and the performance data that brands and suppliers need to assess the fibre in practice.
– Now we can go from showing what the material could do to showing what it actually does, says Anna Rising.
In January, ArtSilk travels to Vietnam as part of the accelerator, with factory visits and meetings with suppliers and manufacturers. The aim is to learn how a new fibre fits into existing production, what requirements it has to meet and which applications are realistic to start with.
The industrial case depends on scale, and ArtSilk frames it conditionally: if the technology can be scaled up without losing quality, it could give the industry a fibre made with less resource-intensive raw materials and processes. The announcement gives no figures for production volumes, cost per kilo or fibre performance.
– The Global Change Award is about having the courage to back an idea before you know exactly where it leads, says Karl-Johan Persson, board member of H&M Foundation.
