Well, it's o-fish-ial. A Bay Area startup recently caught a whopper of a seed deal.
Current Foods, a developer of purportedly sushi-grade fish filets and cubes made from plants, announced last week that it raised $18 million in its initial round. Legally known as Kuleana Inc., the San Francisco company sells its ahi tuna substitute to restaurants, retailers and directly to consumers.
CEO Jacek Prus and Sonia Hurtado co-founded Current in 2019 to address overfishing, which has led to a severe decline in fish populations across the world's oceans, Hurtado said in an interview with Doctorats Industrials, a publication of the government of Spain's Catalonia region.
"Most people are unaware of the real situation on an environmental scale; they think it is exaggerated," Hurtado, Current's chief scientific officer, said in the interview, according to a translation by Google. She continued: "If alternatives and solutions are not discovered, the future of the planet does not look very good."
The company plans to use its new funds to expand its operations, it said in a news release. Current began selling its tuna substitute to consumers last month and offers its plant-based fish at West of Pecos restaurant in San Francisco. The startup also has a smoked salmon substitute in the works, according to its website.
Read on for more details on Current's new deal and other seed funding news from this past week:
Kuleana Inc. (dba Current Foods), San Francisco, $18 million: Electric Feel Ventures led the round for this developer of plant-based seafood substitutes. Astanor Ventures, Tenacity, GreatPoint Ventures and Ray Lane also invested.
Dynamic Labs Inc. (dba Dynamic.xyz), Palo Alto, $7.5 million: Andreessen Horowitz led the round for this provider of cryptocurrency wallet software for digital asset companies. First Round Capital, Castle Island Ventures, Solana Ventures, Chapter One and Circle Ventures also invested.
Asayer SAS (dba OpenReplay), San Francisco, $4.7 million: Runa Capital led the round for this developer of a service that helps developers troubleshoot problems with websites by allowing them to replay users' interactions with the sites. Expa, 468 Capital, Rheingau Founders and the co-founders of Tekion Corp. also invested.
Zing Data Inc., San Francisco, $2.4 million: Kindred Ventures led the round for this provider of data analysis and graphing software. Correlation Ventures also invested.
