Few companies can claim to have built an entire industry around organisms that have existed for roughly three billion years. ALGAENERGY, a Madrid-based biotechnology company, has spent nearly two decades doing exactly that with microalgae.
ALGAENERGY, member of the Agri & Food tech market group, develops and commercialises microalgae-based biosolutions for agriculture.
Their mission is to harness microalgae biotechnology to create biological products that can replace chemical inputs, supporting environmental regeneration and improved quality of life.
ALGAENERGY summarises their approach as “innovation with purpose,” a phrase meant to signal that its work is guided by long-term, meaningful impact rather than short-term gain.
ALGAENERGY was the first company in the world to focus specifically on applying microalgae to agriculture, and the first to cultivate its microalgae using captured CO2 from other industries, thus turning an industrial by-product into a resource.
Their products are supported by substantial scientific validation: effects have been measured at the transcriptomic level and tested across more than 500 field trials, with visible results in crops within hours of application.
What sets ALGAENERGY apart from its competitors is its combination of being a genuine pioneer and having rigorous field proof. This is what has helped the company earn trust in an industry that’s often sceptical of biostimulant claims.
The history of ALGAENERGY starts in 2007 when it was founded by Augusto Rodríguez-Villa, a Spanish lawyer and entrepreneur. He served as President of ALGAENERGY for two decades, and in 2025 he was recognised for his contribution to sustainable agriculture and his legacy in the microalgae sector.
For many years, day-to-day leadership was led by his son, Carlos Rodríguez-Villa Förster, who joined the family business after an early career in international sales and e-commerce. As Managing Director, he oversaw the company’s expansion into more than 20 countries across four continents and built research partnerships with over 200 institutions.
In 2023, ALGAENERGY moved into the De Sangosse Group structure, a step that later set the stage for the appointment of Julio Ángel Pérez Romero as Chief Executive Officer. Pérez Romero brings an agronomic background and prior leadership experience within De Sangosse, and has been tasked with consolidating ALGAENERGY’s identity within the group while scaling its biosolutions and reinforcing its research and innovation work.
In its early years, ALGAENERGY explored several applications for microalgae, including energy and biomaterials, before deciding in 2016 to focus solely on agriculture, paving the way for commercial sales the next year.
A bigger test came in 2023, when a major restructuring led to ALGAENERGY’s partnership with the De Sangosse Group, reorganising its agricultural business into a dedicated entity for international biosolutions.
Carlos Rodríguez-Villa called the partnership a fit built on shared values and long-term vision, with complementary portfolios and geography. It gave ALGAENERGY a partner with nearly a century of experience, 1,500+ employees, and a presence in roughly 80 markets.
ALGAENERGY’s development can be traced through a series of clear stages: founded in 2007, its first laboratory established in 2009, a pilot plant in 2011, and its first industrial-scale cultivation facility in 2014, employing five distinct cultivation technologies powered by captured industrial emissions.
International expansion began in earnest in 2019, and by 2024 the company reported that more than five million farmers worldwide were using its solutions. Over the years, ALGAENERGY has also received more than 30 industry awards, including recognition at the EIC Investor Day in 2020.
More recently, the company has been expanding its presence in the Middle East. In collaboration with De Sangosse, Agronutrition, and Agrimatco, ALGAENERGY supported the launch of InoPlanctonic, a new product range built on its microalgae technology.
In October 2024, ALGAENERGY was selected as one of 72 new companies to join the EIC Scaling Club, and was one of only 10 Spanish deep-tech scale-ups chosen that year.
The company described the selection as recognition of its potential to address current and future challenges in the AgriFood sector, and noted that its strength lies not only in its technology but also in the quality of its teams and culture.
Membership in the Scaling Club provides ALGAENERGY access to a network of more than 50 technology venture capitalists and investors, along with leadership mentoring designed to help founders and executives scale their operations.
For ALGAENERGY, this comes at a moment when the company is already expanding into new regions and integrating more closely with the De Sangosse Group, making the Scaling Club a resource for accelerating that next phase of growth, rather than a starting point.
The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.
The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.
The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.
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