As some of us work to shed pounds as bathing suit season approaches, a growing cohort of new startups developing new forms of healthier and more sustainable fat alternatives is bulking up on funding to scale production and roll out new products.
The latest alt-fat startup to raise funding is CUBIQ Foods, which announced today they have raised €5.75 million Euros ($6M USD) from Cargill and other investors. CUBIQ, which plans to use the new investment to expand commercial and production operations in North America and Europe, is developing a range of products that include plant-based fat replacements and cell-cultivated fat ingredients.
The company rolled out its first product in 2021, a plant-based fat replacer called GoDrop that improves juiciness with fewer calories and less saturated fats. The company, which initially had hoped to release its cell-cultivated fat by the end of 2020, is now eyeing a 2023 release of its cultivated fat in the US market.
The news of CUBIQ’s latest funding round comes a week after Melt&Marble announced they’d raised a €5 million Seed round to scale up production for its precision fermentation-derived fat alternative. Last year, Mission Barns raised an impressive $24 million for its cell-cultivated fat technology it hopes will plump up the flavor profile of alt-bacon, breakfast patties, burgers, nuggets, and more. And in March, Sunnyvale-based Lypid raised $4 million for its technology that microencapsulates plant oils in water to create spongy fats with high melting points.
The race to create new fat alternatives is part of the broader maturation of a future food industry where new startups work to create building blocks for other companies hoping to develop more realistic meat alternatives. This same “horizontalization” of future food is similar to what has occurred in other technology industries where startups can focus their funding and attention on single attributes or components of the end product. Other future food building block cohort sectors include sweeteners, collagen, scaffolding, and the many companies making alt-protein and flavor components for alt-meat and dairy products.
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