Impossible Foods, a Redwood City, CA-based maker of meat directly from plants, raised $75 in funding.
The round was by Singapore-based investment company Temasek with participation from Open Philanthropy Project, Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and Horizon Ventures.
Founded in 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., formerly a biochemistry professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Stanford University, Impossible Foods uses modern science and technology makes meat directly from plants, with a smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals. The company’s flagship product, the Impossible Burger, is made through a combination of plant-based ingredients such as “soy leghemoglobin”, a protein that carries “heme”, an iron-containing molecule that occurs naturally in every animal and plant.
Earlier this month, the US Patent and Trademark Office issued US Patent No. 9,700,067 covering Impossible Foods’ technology to use leghemoglobin in plant-based meat.
The 200-person startup has more than 100 additional patents pending.
FinSMEs
01/08/2017