Milwaukee-area health technology startup GenoPalate Inc. has raised $5.6 million to grow its personalized nutrition products and improve its mobile and web applications, according to a Tuesday announcement.
The financing represents the first half of a planned $10.6 million equity financing round, the announcement said.
GenoPalate provides consumers with personalized nutrition guidance based on DNA results. Customers can purchase a DNA test kit through GenoPalate or upload reports from 23andMe or AncestryDNA. GenoPalate's analysis can help users uncover food sensitivities and genetic superfoods, learn about their genetic-based needs for 23 nutrients and gain insights into how their DNA impacts mood and stress levels, according to the company.
Users can also get personalized recipes based on their GenoPalate results, work one-on-one with registered dieticians and purchase personalized supplements.
"We know that eating the types of food your body is most agreeable to and getting the right kind and amount of nutrients you require can help prevent chronic metabolic diseases," GenoPalate founder and CEO Yi Sherry Zhang said in a statement. "To do this, one must personalize their nutrition."
GenoPalate previously raised $4 million in a round announced in December 2020 and at the time said it had raised a total of more than $6 million. Earlier investors included BrightStar Wisconsin Foundation Inc. and gener8tor. GenoPalate participated in gener8tor’s 2017 Milwaukee accelerator program.
Zhang, a former endocrinology professor at the Medical College of Wisconsin who earned her doctorate in molecular biology at Marquette University, founded GenoPalate in 2016. She was one of the Milwaukee Business Journal's Women of Influence honorees in 2020 and was a 2019 Business Journal 40 Under 40 honoree.
GenoPalate's office is in the Technology Innovation Center at the Milwaukee County Research Park in Wauwatosa. Its board chairman is John Byrnes and Info-Pro Lender Services CEO Chad Raube is a board director. Neither Info-Pro nor Raube has invested in GenoPalate, Raube said via email.
Other local startups in the space include Milwaukee-based health data startup Geno.Me, which allows researchers to purchase anonymized medical and genomic records from consumers who choose to share them, and Food FiXR, a food-as-medicine startup building an app designed to promote optimally healthy grocery store purchases.
Geno.Me recently raised $2.2 million of a planned $3.25 million equity round, according to a form filed on Oct. 13 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
