Elena Moretti

Elena Moretti is an American entrepreneur and materials scientist who founded Canopy Materials, a Brooklyn-based sustainable packaging company, in 2018^[1]. The company develops plant-based alternatives to petroleum-derived plastics using proprietary cellulose nanofiber technology originally developed during Moretti's doctoral research at UC Berkeley^[4].

Under Moretti's leadership, Canopy Materials has raised approximately $47 million in venture capital across seed, Series A, and Series B rounds^[1][7]. The company's packaging is currently in pilot programs with several major U.S. retailers, including Walmart and Target^[6].

Moretti was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Manufacturing & Industry in 2021 and received a Fast Company World Changing Ideas award in 2023^[3][5].

Moretti grew up in Ithaca, New York, where both of her parents were faculty members at Cornell University^[9]. She studied chemical engineering at Cornell as an undergraduate, graduating in 2012, before moving to UC Berkeley for doctoral work in materials science and engineering^[9].

Her dissertation research at Berkeley focused on cellulose nanofiber composites and their potential as high-barrier flexible packaging materials. A 2017 paper co-authored with her advisor was published in Nature Materials and demonstrated that plant-derived nanofibers could achieve moisture and oxygen barrier properties comparable to conventional plastic films^[4]. The paper has been cited over 800 times and remains one of the foundational references in the bio-based packaging field.

Moretti completed her PhD in 2016 and briefly joined Dow Chemical as a research scientist in its polymer division before leaving to found Canopy Materials^[9].

Dow Chemical (2016–2018)

After completing her PhD, Moretti joined Dow Chemical's polymer research division in Midland, Michigan^[9]. She spent two years working on next-generation barrier coatings for food packaging applications. Moretti has described the experience as clarifying: she realized that the incumbent chemical companies were "optimizing the wrong material" and that a fundamentally different feedstock was needed^[2].

Canopy Materials (2018–present)

Moretti founded Canopy Materials in 2018, licensing the cellulose nanofiber technology she had developed at Berkeley^[1]. The company's initial product was a flexible film made from agricultural waste — primarily corn stover and wheat straw — that could replace polyethylene in food packaging applications^[2].

Canopy raised a $4 million seed round from Lowercarbon Capital and Breakthrough Energy Ventures in 2019, followed by a $15 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures in 2021^[1]. In June 2022, the company closed a $28 million Series B led by General Catalyst^[1].

The company opened its first commercial-scale production facility in Newark, New Jersey in 2023, with an annual capacity of 12,000 metric tons^[8]. In January 2024, The Wall Street Journal reported that both Walmart and Target had begun pilot programs testing Canopy's packaging in select product lines^[6].

As of 2026, Canopy Materials employs approximately 85 people across its Brooklyn headquarters and Newark production facility^[7].

Moretti was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for Manufacturing & Industry in 2021^[3]. In 2023, Canopy Materials received a Fast Company World Changing Ideas award in the Materials category^[5].

Her 2017 Nature Materials paper on cellulose nanofiber composites has been cited over 800 times and was highlighted by the journal as one of its most influential papers of the decade in the sustainable materials category^[4].