Bill Gates among investors in $108m series D for Stanford spinout Impossible Foods, which is looking to make meat from plants.
Stanford spinout Impossible Foods has raised $108m in a series D to bolster its position to manufacture and market its ‘Impossible Burger’ – a meat product which originally came from plants.
The US biochemistry firm saw support from Microsoft founder Bill Gates, investment bank UBS, and venture firms Horizons Ventures, Kholsa Ventures, and Viking Global Investors. Impossible held a series A, worth $75m, this time last year. It has now raised $183m in venture funding.
The company has developed a burger entirely from plants. Impossible’s founder and CEO, Stanford professor Patrick Brown, said that his team had examined animal products on the molecular level, and then utilised proteins and nutrients from a variety of plant sources to recreate the taste and texture of a regular burger.
Aiming for what Brown describes as the “hardcore meat user”, the company’s aim is to develop a range of meat and dairy products using the same process. However, the next stage in Impossible’s development is to bring its burger to market, which the company will begin rolling out in 2016.
Speaking on the burger’s development, Brown said: “Figuring it out was hard, making it actually was a relatively simple process,” Brown said. “We use simple ingredients from plants that you could pretty much find in your local supermarket. We deliberately select out specific, very specific proteins from plants—this is something that hasn’t really been done before for food—that have the exact properties we need. Every molecule in our burger is something found in nature.”
