C16 Biosciences, the makers of Palmless™, today announced three new ingredients for beauty and personal care — TorulaSilk, Torula Butter, and the Torula Carotenoid Complex — alongside its Cocoa Butter Equivalent, the company’s first ingredient for food. Together with Torula Oil, whose breakthrough efficacy data was released last month, the Palmless™ platform now offers five commercial ingredients.

Entering A New Market

Palmless™ Cocoa Butter Equivalent marks C16’s entry into edible fats and oils. The product is a next-generation cocoa butter, crafted through precision fermentation, that solves three problems that have long plagued the chocolate industry: performance variability, supply risk, and price unpredictability.

Cocoa butter is an essential component of chocolate, found in dark, milk, and white varieties alike. Yet it is notoriously inconsistent: the same fat behaves differently depending on where the beans were grown, the season, and the harvest. This creates cascading challenges for chocolate manufacturers: tempering curves that require constant recalibration, bloom that compromises shelf life and appearance, and structural defects that cause cracking and breaking during production. C16’s fermentation-based product delivers a more consistent fat profile and predictable crystallization behavior, eliminating the variability problem at its source.

“Cocoa butter is fundamental in making chocolate a luxurious experience: it’s responsible for the perfect snap on the first bite, the reason chocolate melts exactly at body temperature, and it leaves smooth aftertaste,” said Shara Ticku, founder and CEO of C16 Biosciences. “We brought all those sensorial properties to life, but from fermentation rather than industrial agriculture. Our process delivers products more consistently and more on-spec to the needs of chocolate makers.”

The chocolate industry is already familiar with fermentation. Every cocoa bean that becomes chocolate is first transformed by fermentation, which cultivates chocolate’s signature flavor, aroma, and character.

“Fermentation has long played a critical role in developing the flavor precursors in chocolate,” said Ticku. “Now it’s a critical step in developing sensorial performance and functionality, too.”

Because the ingredient is decoupled from cocoa agriculture, it provides consistent supply and stable pricing, turning sustainability into a commercial advantage.

Expanding the Beauty and Personal Care Portfolio

Building on the commercial success of Torula Oil, C16 expanded its beauty and personal care offering with three new ingredients:

  • TorulaSilk (Multiple Grades Available): Featuring a broad fatty acid profile spanning C8 to C24, TorulaSilk combines the sensorial elegance of lightweight lipids with the conditioning benefits of heavier triglycerides. TorulaSilk provides exceptional spreadability, fast absorption, and a dry-touch finish; it also functions as a fermentation-derived replacement for D5/D6 silicones.

  • Torula Butter: Torula Butter provides rich conditioning while minimizing the waxiness, drag, and scent often associated with traditional butters. With a 32°C melt point, it melts beautifully at skin temperature for a soft application that leaves skin nourished without heavy residue. Uniquely, the butter contains naturally occurring sterols that support the skin barrier and provide essential structure to solid, semi-solid, and liquid products.

  • Torula Carotenoid Complex: Built on the robust antioxidant profile native to the Palmless™ platform, this complex harnesses the power of fungal-specific carotenoids torulene, torularhodin, and beta-carotene. These potent antioxidants defend formulations against oxidative degradation and replenish vital molecules in the skin that are typically depleted by UV exposure and environmental stress.

While precision fermentation ingredients have attracted significant industry attention, few have unlocked commercial sales. Palmless™ ingredients are already formulated into dozens of products available at major US beauty retailers and international outlets.

“Torula Oil has become a go-to ingredient for formulators across skincare, suncare, bodycare, and color cosmetics,” said David Heller, founder and COO of C16 Biosciences. “These three new ingredients provide those same brands a full biotechnology-derived toolkit, from high-potency actives to functional emollients and butters.”

All Palmless™ ingredients are produced in 50,000-liter fermentation tanks, a scale C16 first achieved in 2022, making it one of few precision fermentation companies producing at this capacity at a single site.

“C16 now offers a multi-ingredient portfolio commercially that manufacturers can formulate with today,” Heller said. “Palmless™ is not a single ingredient story. We’ve scaled the technology, launched ingredients, and now we’re expanding that portfolio to further drive our growth and impact.”

To explore the full Palmless™ portfolio, including the 2026 Torula Oil efficacy data, please visit www.gopalmless.com.

About C16 Biosciences

C16 Biosciences is a New York City-based biotechnology company producing a portfolio of next-generation ingredients for consumer products and industrial markets under the Palmless™ brand. C16’s platform produces multiple high-performance ingredients from a single organism — each backed by independent efficacy data, available at commercial scale. For more information, visit www.c16bio.com.

About Palmless™

Palmless™ is C16 Biosciences’ ingredient brand, offering a growing portfolio of fermentation-derived ingredients that no crop makes and no chemistry replicates — across beauty, food, and energy. Learn more at www.gopalmless.com and follow @gopalmless.

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