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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Aqua Cultured Foods

Aqua Cultured Foods Building Manufacturing Plant to Commercialize Fermentation-Derived Seafood

Chicago-based food tech start-up Aqua Cultured Foods has begun building a new manufacturing facility for its plant-based seafood products in the West Loop area of the city. The facility, nearly three times the size of Aqua’s current base, is already food-grade and requires minimal upgrades to enable the company to scale production of its fermentation-derived protein.

According to the company, their production methods use standard food production equipment, allowing quicker buildout. Aquaculture says its production methods are also space-efficient, comparing their usage of space as being similar to vertical farming.

“This move is the final step on the road to commercialization of our alt-seafood, and it’s what we and our supporters have been waiting for,” said Anne Palermo, CEO of Aqua Cultured Food.

Unlike many alt-seafood companies creating more straightforward plant-based analogs, Aqua Cultured utilizes biomass fermentation to grow its protein. The company uses its proprietary fungi to produce seafood analogs such as tuna, calamari, and shrimp.

Aqua Cultured Foods says it is currently holding tasting events with strategic partners including restaurants and plans to roll out its products in the second quarter of this year.  

The Week in Food Tech Funding: AI-Powered Future Food Attracting Lots of Venture Capital

When it comes to AI meets food, it’s easy to think of food robots, precision farming, or even restaurant tech. But over the past year or so, we’ve seen a parade of new startups emerge that use machine learning and other forms of AI to develop new food building blocks.

Take Kingdom Supercultures. The company, which raised $25 million a couple of weeks ago, uses machine learning to explore the properties of existing cultures to create what it claims is the world’s largest biobank. From there, they mine to explore potentially new and interesting microbial combinations called supercultures that provide new functionality, flavors, and more.

And this week, a company called Shiru, which uses machine learning and precision fermentation to create analogs to animal-based ingredients, raised $17 million. Like Kingdom, Shiru is using AI to rapidly develop a massive proprietary database, only Shiru’s dataset is the first to focus on “protein identity with protein-related food function.” The company mines its database with machine learning to identify novel ingredients that replicate “the taste, texture, gelation, foaming, emulsification, and binding abilities of animal proteins.”

In short, both companies are using AI to build next-generation ingredient platforms and, in doing so, are hoping to accelerate the process of ingredient development by an order of magnitude over a purely wet lab approach.

And they’re not the only ones. Climax Foods, led by Google’s former head of data science, is building plant-based cheese by analyzing data sets using machine learning to figure out what novel tastes and textures a set of particular raw ingredients and isolates will yield. Brightseed is analyzing plant molecules using AI to understand and isolate new phytonutrient compounds and, you guessed it, build a database from which they make predictions about how these new compounds may impact health.

It’s an exciting time in the world of future food. As advances in AI and cutting-edge biotechnology continue to merge and yield new food building blocks at a breathtaking pace, we’ll be watching for the next Kingdom Supercultures and Shiru to emerge over the next year.

If you are the next company in this space, drop us a line. We’d like to hear from you.

And now for the rest of this week’s funding news.

Agtech

Pure Harvest Smart Farms – $65 Million: UAE-based precision agriculture firm Pure Harvest Smart Farms has raised $64.5 million in funding. Today Pure Harvest operates three farms in the UAE and is developing new farms in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Pure Harvest’s crops include tomatoes, leafy greens, and strawberries. The funding brings the company’s total invested capital to USD 271.6 million, which the company claims is the MENASA (Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia) region’s largest agtech investment.

Grubmarket – $145 Million – Grubmarket, a B2B and B2C digital supply chain company, has raised $145 million Series E. The company, which operates an online marketplace for fresh produce, offers managed warehousing and supply chain operation services across North America, and has a variety of cloud software for food wholesalers and farms, is on track for a $1 billion annualized run rate. The company plans to use the funding to expand into new markets (and hopefully to improve its website, which does not look at all like a website of a company close to $1B in revenue).

Fermentation

Aqua Cultured – $2.1 Million: Alt-seafood startup Aqua Cultured has raised $2.1 million in pre-seed funding. Unlike many other alt-seafood startups using a straight plant-based or cell-cultured approach, Aqua Cultured uses microbial fermentation techniques to create whole-muscle cut seafood alternatives. The company has developed formulas for tuna, whitefish, squid, and shrimp that leverage its novel fungi as the primary ingredient. Investors include Supply Change Capital, Aera VC, Sustainable Food Ventures, Hanfield Venture Partners, Lifely VC, Conscience VC, Kingfisher Capital, Big Idea Ventures. $2.1 million, a nice pre-seed raise, is even more impressive considering the company only started last month.

Coffee

Cometeer – $35 Million: Cometeer, a company that makes frozen coffee pucks and sells them in packs via a DTC-by-mail model, has raised a $35 million Series B. The company’s pucks consist of 10x strength frozen coffee which are dropped into hot water to make a drinkable cup of Joe. The pucks aren’t cheap at $64 for a box of 32, or $2 a pop. You can see Ashlen Wilder’s review of Cometeer here.

Fast Grocery

Gorillas – $1B: We have a few more details on the nearly $1 billion in funding for Gorillas we wrote about early this month. The company raised an almost $1 billion in funding, with Delivery Hero leading the round with $235 million in funding in exchange for 8% of the company. While that seems like a whole lotta capital, the company’s going to need it as it continues to build out a warehouse and dark store network that is already in 55 cities across Europe and the U.S.

CPG

N!CK’s – $100 Million – Better-for-you food company N!CK’s has hauled in an impressive $100 million in funding in a round was led by Kinnevik, Ambrosia and Temasek. Others throwing their hat in the N!CK’s ring include Gullspang, fellow Swedish food standout Oatly, Peak Bridge, Capagro and Nicoya. The company uses proprietary sweeteners and other ingredients to make ice cream, protein bars, and cookies. N!CK’s plans to use the money to accelerate its North American and European growth by expanding its product portfolio and doubling N!CK’S store count in 2022.

Food Robots

Fabric – $200 Million – Fabric, a maker of robotic micro-fulfillment solutions for grocery and e-commerce retailers, announced today they have raised $200 million in a Series C funding round. The new funding puts the company’s valuation at $1 billion. Formerly called Common Sense Robotics, Fabric works with large online grocers and retailers such as Walmart, Instacart, and FreshDirect to build automated micro-fulfillment centers via a mix of fulfillment-as-a-service and hybrid ownership models. The company’s solution involves an intricate blend of robotics, vertically stacked storage of products, and human operators and packers that help package up the final delivery and handoff to delivery drivers.

Aqua Cultured Foods Is Creating Whole Muscle Cuts of Seafood Using Fungi

Seafood is the most traded commodity in the world, and it is estimated that 85 percent of wild fish stocks are overfished or fully exploited. As a way to address the plethora of environmental issues found within the commercial seafood industry, startup Aqua Cultured Foods is developing alternative forms of seafood using fermentation.

The company, based in Chicago, Illinois, is in the process of developing whole muscle cuts of alternative seafood using fungi. I spoke on the phone this week with Anne Palermo, the CEO and founder of Aqua Cultured Foods, who was looking for a solution that could help feed the rapidly growing global population. She said, “The more I looked into fermentation, the more I thought that was the way to do it. You can create whole, bioavailable proteins that are very efficient to produce anywhere in the world.”

Using its fermentation process, Aqua Cultured Foods can produce a wide variety of seafood analogs — shrimp, white fish, ahi tuna, scallops, and calamari, to name a few. According to Palermo, the products will have the slippery and delicate texture found in many types of seafood, and will also contain the vitamin B12, which can sometimes be challenging to acquire naturally in a vegan or plant-based diet.

When asked about the process and tech behind developing the whole-muscle cuts of seafood, Palermo said she could not share much at the moment. The startup currently has three pending patents for its alternative seafood and the process behind it, including one for its proprietary fungi.

The Good Food Institute considers the plant-based seafood industry a white space, and this sector currently only accounts for 1 percent of total plant-based meat sales. There are so many different types and species of seafood, so at the moment there are seemingly endless possibilities for innovation in this space.

For alternative seafood, there are three different categories: plant-based, cultured, and fermentation. Aqua Cultured Foods seems to be really the only company in the fermentation category, but Prime Roots and Quorn each have one alternative seafood product (lobster ravioli and fish sticks). Blue Nalu, Wild Type, Shiok Meats, Avant Meats are a few companies that fall into the cultured meat category. The plant-based category includes Sophie’s Kitchen, New Waves Foods, Good Catch, and Hooked.

Popcorn shrimp will be the first product launched by Aqua Cultured Foods, but the release date of the product has yet to be announced. The whole-muscle cuts of seafood will be available at some point after the popcorn shrimp on retailer shelves.