Perfect Day, the Berkeley-based developer of animal-free dairy products including ice cream, cheese and yogurt via fermentation, announced a monster fundraising round of $350 million on Thursday as it gears up for a near-future IPO.
Since Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi founded Perfect Day in Emeryville in 2014, the company has raised $750 million and reached a $1.5 billion valuation.
The new Series D, which nearly doubles the company’s funding to date, was led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, the founders told the Wall Street Journal. The round included contributions from Horizons Ventures, SK Inc. and Walt Disney Chairman Bob Iger as well, the company said in a statement later Thursday.
A spokesperson for Perfect Day told me in an emailed statement that the new capital will be invested in the "Modern Kitchen" brand launch ("soon to offer a range of household dairy staples") and expansion of its B2B ingredients business. Additionally the funds will channeled into the company's Logan, Utah bioprocess scale-up facility which it purchased last year and through which it offers "biology-as-a-service" to clients in food, life sciences, and biopharmaceutical industries — on top of its own research and development.
Perfect Day is laying the groundwork to list shares within the next 12 months, the Journal reported, citing people close to the company, but those plans are not set in stone given the possibility that the IPO bonanza could lose steam and investor enthusiasm could soften after a record year of investment in the alternative protein space.
“When we first started this almost eight years ago, we had the simple goal of creating a way to make dairy without animals,” said Pandya, Perfect Day’s CEO, in a statement. “We quickly realized that we could maximize our positive impact for the planet and the global food system by applying our technology and know-how across the supply chain.”
This spring Perfect Day relocated to Berkeley and quadrupled its real estate footprint with a sublease of 112,000 square feet of research facility space at 740 Heinz Ave. that runs through 2029. Not long after, actor Leonardo DiCaprio joined Perfect Day's advisory board.
In 2016 the company expanded into the B2B supply chain space and began selling protein products to food companies, including eventually ice cream manufacturer Graeter’s. In 2019 Perfect Day launched its ice cream (“Brave Robot”) made from non-animal whey protein under its subsidiary brand, The Urgent Company. This fall Perfect Day will debut its second product, an animal-free cream cheese, the first in an eventual line under its new Modern Kitchen brand.
In Thursday’s announcement, Perfect Day said it’s entering a third space in “enterprise biology” that would involve providing technology development services to other companies aiming for scale of related products. And the company has also considered partnerships that would use its protein-making process in pharmaceuticals.
“There are innovators all over the world with ideas and ambitions similar to our animal-free milk protein, but need help getting there,” Gandhi said in the statement, likening the technology development space to the flourishing alternative protein ingredients market. “We’re standing up business models to be able to share our demonstrated capabilities in a way that maximizes upsides for all, yet ensures that Perfect Day remains at the forefront of our new industry.”
Perfect Day has made a string of executive hires in the last quarter, including TM Narayan as chief of business operations, Allison Fowler as chief marketing officer, a senior vice president focused on international markets and a vice president of finance.
Perfect Day develops dairy protein by feeding genetically altered microflora plant sugar that it turns into protein via fermentation. As an alternative to industrialized dairy farming — a major contributor to global warming — the company says a third-party study found its process produces up to 97% less greenhouse gas emissions and uses 99% less water.
