Your next lamb burger or shawarma might be made entirely from plants if a San Francisco startup has its way.
Black Sheep Foods, which is developing a plant-based alternative to lamb meat, on Thursday the company announced just over $12 million in new funding from a Series A round.
Unovis led the round, which also included Bessemer Venture Partners, AgFunder and KBW Ventures, according to TechCrunch which first reported the news.
This is the company's second funding round in less than 12 months and brings its total funding to around $18 million. Black Sheep raised a little over $5 million in a seed round at the beginning of the year.
The new funding comes amid a broader pullback from investors in the food tech space, though. Both the number of deals and their value have steadily declined since the first quarter of the year, according to PitchBook, with 269 deals worth $2.7 billion that have closed through the end of September.
Funding for food tech at all stages was down in the third quarter. Early stage funding dropped the steepest at 73.5%, with later stage deals declining nearly 62% and angel rounds down around 32%.
One of the largest earlier-stage food tech deals in the first nine months of 2022 went to London-based Hoxton Farms which is developing a way to cultivate animal fat in a lab. It raised $24.3 million in August. And San Francisco-based Flavrs raised $7 million. It's a cooking and recipe platform that integrates shopping for ingredients.
To create its flagship lamb product, Black Sheep combines textured pea protein, high oleic sunflower oil, refined coconut oil and cocoa butter.
The company was also a contestant in the Bay Area Inno Madness bracket competition earlier this year.
