The seed funding will help Climax Foods to develop new ways of processing plants into foods that can actually taste the same or even better than animal-based foods
Climax Foods’ team at their office space in Berkeley, California. (Credit:Business Wire.)
Climax Foods, a data science firm creating the future of food, has raised $7.5m in seed funding round.
Investors who participated in the funding round include At One Ventures, Manta Ray Ventures, S2G Ventures, Valor Siren Ventures, Prelude Ventures, ARTIS Ventures, Index Ventures, Luminous Ventures, Canaccord Genuity Group, Carrot Capital and Global Founders Capital and several angel investors.
Climax Foods aims to create a new technology to make food by converting plants into products into same or better tasting compared to animal-based products, using less processing.
The firm is intersecting data science and food science to solve the complex problems of removing animals from the food system by creating a direct to convert plants into products.
Climax Foods aims to replace unsustainable diets centered around animals
Climax Foods aims to replace unsustainable diets that are currently centered around animals with better-tasting plant-based foods. It plans to do it by examining animal products at the molecular level and aims to decipher why they are craveable.
Climax Foods CEO Oliver Zahn said: “We are at a pivotal time where industrialization enabled explosive population growth and consumption of animal products. Today, more than 90% of all mammalian animals and more than 70% of all birds on the planet exist for the sole purpose of metabolizing plants and being turned into food.
“This industry is complex and wasteful, creating as much climate change as all modes of transportation combined, and using more than a third of the earth’s water and usable land. By speeding up food science innovation, Climax Foods is able to convert plants into equally craveable foods without the environmental impact.”
To unlock the full potential of plants, an investigation on the infinite number of ways of combining hundreds of thousands of plant sources, has to be taken up. To simplify the task at hand, Climax Foods has developed machine learning frameworks to unlock all that the plants can naturally have to offer.
Funding secured from the seed round is expected to fuel the deep research into taste, flavor, texture and nutrition of the most desired animal-based food categories starting with cheese.
At One Ventures Tom Chi said: “Climax Foods is unlocking a frontier of how expressive we can be with plant-based foods. They are laying the foundation for a future where healthy, affordable, plant-based foods rival or even surpass the flavor of the animal-based foods they are replacing.
“Beyond being delicious, the work is crucial for the transition away from unsustainable animal agriculture which drives massive habitat destruction and generates more than 25% of total greenhouse gas emissions.”