Six months after shuttering its consumer division and cutting more than 100 jobs, a Berkeley alt-dairy startup has raised tens of millions in venture debt as it seeks to build out its cow-free dairy business.
Perfect Day uses precision fermentation to develop alternative dairy products without relying on industrialized dairy farming — essentially, creating milk without the cows. It describes its products as "animal-free" rather than "plant-based."
Late last year, Perfect Day started raising a new venture debt round, which it's calling a pre-Series E round. So far, the company has raised $45 million in the debt round and is aiming to double that amount, according to an SEC filing.
A representative for the company confirmed that the filing is accurate and that so far they have worked with existing investors on the debt round.
Perfect Day has raised $750 million in total equity funding over the past decade, including $350 million in a Series D round that valued the company at $1.5 billion more than two years ago.
Temasek Holdings and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board led the Series D round which also included Horizons Ventures, SK Inc, and Walt Disney's CEO Robert Iger.
And according to PitchBook, Perfect Day's other investors include SoftBank, SOSV, IndieBio, ICONIQ Growth and ADM Ventures.
Perfect Day's co-founders, Ryan Pandya and Perumal Gandhi, have also stepped down from their roles, the company announced last week. Pandya had been CEO and neither he nor Gandhi will hold board seats, AgFunderNews reported.
Pandya and Gandhi stepped down as of Dec. 31, the company confirmed, and the company's current president TM Narayan was appointed interim CEO as of Jan. 1.
Two new board co-chairs were also appointed: Aftab Mathur of Temasek Holdings and Patrick Zhang of Horizons Ventures.
"The company has successfully de-risked its technology and is now moving to focus on executing scaled manufacturing of dairy protein from fermentation, giving it a clear path to profitability and proving unit economics for its first-of-its-kind whey protein from fermentation," Perfect Day wrote in a blog post announcing the financing round and leadership changes.
In the blog post, Perfect Day also teased an upcoming "partner launch" with a "major" consumer packaged goods brand for a whey protein product.
Perfect Day was reportedly planning for a potential IPO sometime in 2022, but like most companies over the past couple of years, appears to have put its public offering plans on ice.
In July, Perfect Day laid off more than 100 employees as part of a restructuring in which it also folded its consumer brand division that was dubbed "The Urgent Co."
That division had four brands which they developed in different product categories: Modern Kitchen focused on cream cheese, Brave Robot and Coolhaus had ice cream and other frozen treats, and the California Performance Company carried why protein products.
