Sustainable Bioproducts, a local startup using a fermentation process to produce lab-grown, edible protein products that mimic chicken nuggets and cream cheese, has announced it has raised a large new round of funding, accompanied by a name change.
Now known as Nature's Fynd, the food tech company raised $80 million in a Series B round led by Generation Investment Management and Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a $1 billion fund led by Bill Gates that aims to invest in companies that are combating climate change, the company announced Tuesday. Breakthrough’s other investors include Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Richard Branson.
Other participants in Nature's Fynd's funding round include 1955 Capital; Mousse Partners; ADM Ventures, the venture arm of ADM; and Danone Manifesto Ventures, the venture arm of global food and beverage company Danone.
To date, Nature's Fynd has raised more than $113 million after raising a $33 million round in 2019, in which Breakthrough Energy Ventures also participated.
Much of the funding will be used to support work happening at Nature's Fynd’s new 35,000-square-foot manufacturing facility on the Union Stockyards site on the South Side of the city, said Nature's Fynd founder and CEO Thomas Jonas.
Production at the new facility began in early March, and the space is used to commercialize food and beverage products for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack occasions.
Nature's Fynd currently employs 50 people across its Chicago headquarters and its Bozeman, Montana, R&D center, but plans to double headcount by the end of the year, Jonas said.
Nature's Fynd, one of Chicago Inno’s 20 Startups to Watch in 2020, started as a research project from NASA, which aimed to discover what the environment on places like Jupiter and elsewhere in the galaxy would need to look like—physically and chemically—to look for life. The research took them to Yellowstone national park, where they studied microbes that could survive in very extreme environments.
Through that work, the startup discovered a fermentation process to efficiently grow edible protein from microscopic organisms. Nature's Fynd’s products are also complete proteins, meaning they contain adequate proportions of each of the nine essential amino acids, like fiber, vitamins and calcium, Jonas said.
“We developed a novel fermentation technology that enables us to cultivate these high-protein microbes,” Jonas said. “We’ve been able to make a lot of different types of food using this new protein.”
Foods include chicken nuggets, hot dogs, cream cheese, chocolate mouse and hamburger patties.
Jonas said Nature's Fynd is currently in discussions with grocery retailers to bring its products to consumers but has no solidified partnerships yet. Though Nature's Fynd intends to sell its products under its branding in grocery stores, Jonas said the company would also manufacture alternative meat products for other food brands if a partnership made sense. For example, Nature's Fynd could make the protein for a pasta sauce brand’s Bolognese.
“[Our product] is great for you and great for the planet,” Jonas said. “And of course, it has to taste good as well because otherwise, what’s the point?”
