Helaina’s breastmilk alternative, made using precision fermentation, is a step up from formula and offers the same proteins found in human breastmilk.
The San Francisco precision fermentation company will scale up its process for brewing animal-free egg proteins and other high-functioning ingredients.
The Berlin-based startup has set itself the target of replacing 10% of Europe’s dairy products with animal-free versions produced using precision fermentation by 2030.
For many foodtech startups 2024 has been a year of resilience and confidence, a time when they managed to win investors’ trust and secure new funding despite an ongoing credit crunch. Here are the top 15 foodtech deals of the year.
“A lot of foodtech founders in this dry capital environment are beating their heads against the wall with the conviction that the wall will break before their heads do,” observes Paul Shapiro at The Better Meat Co. “That said, deals are still getting done.”
Spanish startup MOA Foodtech has built an AI-powered biomass fermentation platform to transform byproducts from the food industry into high value ingredients.
Food manufacturers have been looking for viable egg replacements for years as prices yo-yo with every avian flu outbreak, says Onego Bio.
Unsurprisingly, AI was top of mind for many founders, but it’s not the only thing on their list…
“With this reduction we’ve hit an essential milestone on our path to achieving cost parity with conventional mozzarella and reaching positive net margins,” claims CEO Matt Gibson.
New research suggests that ultrafine bubbles can optimize fermentation processes by improving metabolic efficiency in microbial cells, says Hydrosome Labs.
“This is the culmination of seven years of R&D to get expression levels to a point where the science and the economics make sense,” says founder and CEO Magi Richani.
Shiru is “building a comprehensive platform that will revolutionize ingredient discovery across multiple molecular classes,” claims founder and CEO Dr. Jasmin Hume.
High-tech shrimp farming company Oceanloop reels in a fresh round of capital.
Loopworm is ramping up production at a facility in Bangalore capable of churning out 6,000t of silkworm and black soldier fly protein a year.
Antwerp-based FlyBlast has a stable black soldier fly breeding line that expresses human insulin “at very high yields,” claims CEO Johan Jacobs.
The “investment towards future partnership” will help transform the way cocoa is produced in a market where demand is expected to dramatically exceed supply in the coming years, claims the startup.
“If you bring big and small companies together in the wrong way, the bigger one tends to kill the smaller ones,” says Dr. Ian Noble.
Kinoko-Tech, an Israeli startup specializing in fungi-based fermentation, has struck a deal with Metaphor Foods, the innovation arm of Hela, to produce its minimally-processed fermented foods in APAC.
Plus: Ecovative raises $28 million for alt-leather, Deliveroo exits Singapore
Multiple startups can now make casein proteins without cows. But do the unit economics add up? Israeli startup DairyX weighs in….
