French startup Standing Ovation has raised a €25 million ($28.5 million) Series B round and secured an additional €5 million ($5.7 million) in non-dilutive funding to scale dairy proteins via precision fermentation.
The round was jointly led by the Ecotechnologies 2 fund managed on behalf of the French government by Bpifrance, and Crédit Mutuel Innovation, and supported by Astanor, Bel Group, Seventure Partners, GoodStartUp, Danone Ventures, Big Idea Ventures, Angelor, Newtree, and Noshaq. The non-dilutive finding came from Bpifrance and a leading banking syndicate.
The funding will accelerate the commercialization of the firm’s casein proteins in North America in 2026 before expansion into Europe and Asia in late 2027.
Cheaper feedstocks utilized in circular process
Unlike many firms in the precision fermentation space, which use dextrose to feed their microbes, Standing Ovation has a patented process that uses acid whey—a side stream from cottage cheese, Greek yogurt and some other dairy production processes—as the primary carbon source in its feedstock.
This is a key differentiator, CEO Yvan Chardonnens told AgFunderNews. “We still need to rebalance it with some sugar [he did not share in what ratios], but it’s super important for us not to buy food to build food. It was super convenient for us to go towards dairy industry effluence because our customers [in dairy] are the one that are generating the most.
“At this point in time, people are paying money to get rid of acid whey, but [if that changes] whatever we’re going to pay will always be less than [what we pay for] sugar.”
Regulatory and scale up
Founded in Paris in 2020 by Romain Chayot and Frédéric Paques, Standing Ovation can produce casein proteins in engineered fungi, yeast, and bacteria but has not yet disclosed which host it plans to use on a commercial basis.
Chardonnens hopes to secure a ‘no questions’ letter from the FDA by the end of 2026 affirming the GRAS status of the firm’s proteins and is about to submit a novel foods dossier to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which in the best-case scenario could lead to EU approval at the end of 2027.
Notably, Standing Ovation is not raising money to build its own factories, said Chardonnens, a food ingredients industry veteran who took the helm in mid-2024. “We are working with CMOS [contract manufacturing organizations] in Eastern Europe. We are commissioning one in India, and we have an exclusive partnership with Ajinomoto here in France for large scale up.
“We also have another exclusive partnership with Tetra Pak, who will be there to support us in our downstream process in terms of protein extraction and purification.”
Novel functionality
Standing Ovation produces three casein proteins—alpha-s1, alpha s2, and beta-casein—and is attracting interest from potential customers in a variety of applications from protein bars, coffee foam and nutraceuticals to ice cream, where it can help firms clean up labels and add protein.
When it comes to price, said Chardonnens, “We are not in the game of one for one replacement. We are offering different functionality [to animal-sourced milk protein isolates] and enabling formulators to augment products with value added benefits.”
As one example, adding a very small amount of casein protein to “vegetable-based barista foam” can have a transformative effect on its stability, mouthfeel, and emulsification, he said.
“We can deconstruct things so we have alpha s1, alpha s2, beta-casein, or any combination of these from different mammals and then we can add other dimensions of treatment such as calcium, sodium, acid. You can really expand the functional possibilities of what casein can do.”
He added: “The game of price parity is not necessarily something that we are we are ready to play right now, but I would say one of the most important pillars of our new investors’ due diligence was our roadmap towards cost parity.
“What has been positive for them is that we did not put economies of scales as a number one lever towards achieving cost parity, and we’re not going to spend hundreds of millions into a factory needing huge volumes because if you don’t have at least 75% of your capacity utilized the first day, you die on the fixed cost after two weeks.”
Ajinomoto and Tetra Pak
He added: “The fact that we have Ajinomoto [as a partner] will help us to get scale very quickly and what is super interesting is the expertise [Ajinomoto will bring] in terms of [driving] productivity, which is a big part towards cost parity.”
Tapping into Tetra Pak’s expertise will also be mission critical, he said, “because it is in the downstream process that you make or break things. You don’t want to purify too much and end up with small quantities of something super expensive, so finding the equilibrium is super important.”
While animal-derived dairy protein prices are going up, Standing Ovation is not relying on soaring dairy prices for its business model to work, he stressed. “We are not counting on this to get to cost parity.”
From a marketing perspective, meanwhile, the key is “keeping things simple” and focusing on the benefits of your products, not the production method, he said.
Casein: the North Face of precision fermentation
Standing Ovation was able to secure a sizable Series B round in the current grim funding environment in part because it had demonstrated its tech at industrial scale, said Chardonnens,
“This is not a concept. This is something we demonstrated at scale with the Bel Group last fall. We are also focused on casein, which is the North Face of precision fermentation, whereas a lot of competitors decided to go for [the whey protein] beta-lactoglobulin, as that is easier [to make].
“The fact that we have paved this road with patents also puts us in a fantastic position to become the true leader in this space. Our mission is very clear. It’s about food sovereignty. It’s about sustainable proteins. It’s about maximizing the value chain of the dairy industry, and accelerating CO2 reduction.”
👉 Other players developing casein proteins via precision fermentation include Leprino Foods and Fooditive, New Culture, Change Foods, Those Vegan Cowboys, DairyX, All G, Eden Brew, and Heni Innovation/Zero Cow Factory.
Further reading:
21st Bio on strains, scale, and the valley of death: Fixing precision fermentation’s weak links
