As meat costs soar to file highs, The Higher Meat Co. (BMC) introduced this week that it has closed an oversubscribed $31 million Collection A spherical to scale its patented mycoprotein fermentation platform to industrial ranges. The West Sacramento–based mostly firm plans to convey its Rhiza mycoprotein to market at costs decrease than U.S. commodity floor beef by 2026.
The spherical was co-led by Future Ventures and Resilience Reserve, with participation from Epic Ventures, Sigma Ventures, Hickman’s Household Farms CEO Glenn Hickman, and others. Each Hickman and Future Ventures co-founder Steve Jurvetson will be a part of BMC’s board.
“We’ve invented and patented our tech, acquired regulatory approval, scaled to an illustration plant, and confirmed demand exists for Rhiza mycoprotein. It’s now time to totally commercialize and introduce our new crop that may assist the protein business reduce prices and enhance vitamin, all with a a lot lighter footprint,” CEO Paul Shapiro mentioned in saying the spherical.
Shapiro, who has been one of many main evangelists within the alt-protein area because the publication of his e-book Clear Meat in 2018, has remained unwavering in his push to finish animal agriculture. On the similar time, he has taken a realistic method to constructing options that may achieve actual traction within the market.
“Even in 2018, I believed that cultivated meat was nonetheless one thing that may be a very long time earlier than it made any actual dent within the meat market, I wished to make an impression sooner,” Shapiro advised me final 12 months on The Spoon Podcast. That need for fast impression, he mentioned, is why he shifted to mycoprotein.
The choice was additionally formed by the restrictions of plant proteins. “It grew to become very clear that there have been lots of limitations to utilizing plant proteins like taste, ingredient lists, allergenicity, and volatility in provide chains,” Shapiro mentioned. Against this, mycoprotein provided higher performance, fewer allergens, and decrease prices at scale.
Shapiro and BMC finally honed in on a pressure of Neurospora, which he described as “rather more meat-like than Quorn’s product, doesn’t must be frozen, can be utilized as a single ingredient, and now has each FDA and USDA approval.”
Shapiro’s pragmatism prolonged past specializing in mycoprotein. He acknowledged that buyers and mainstream meat manufacturers weren’t prepared to surrender animal agriculture altogether, and he noticed hybrid merchandise as a solution to present early impression and win adoption.
BMC’s early partnership with Perdue Farms led to the profitable Hen Plus line, nonetheless on cabinets 5 years later. Shapiro believes hybridization can unlock far better impression than area of interest plant-based choices. “Think about if along with providing the Not possible Whopper, Burger King have been to make the traditional Whopper 20% plant-based. Swiftly, you’ve obtained a ten-fold discount in meat with out having to influence one individual to make a special choice.”
With the brand new spherical, BMC plans to scale its fermentation facility tenfold and put together for the industrial rollout of Rhiza in 2026.
On the core, Shapiro’s motivation stays unchanged. His deal with scalability and client adoption has now resulted in contemporary funding in a troublesome fundraising atmosphere and set the corporate on a pathway towards robust progress.
In a summer time when some are claiming cultivated meat is making a comeback due to new regulatory approvals, and when extremely processed, tech-forward plant-based meats from the likes of Past and Not possible are nonetheless struggling to search out traction, Shapiro has proven that practicality and assembly customers, retailers, and CPG companions the place they’re is a profitable technique.
Nonetheless, his long-term focus has not shifted. “Possibly in 20 years, individuals can be shocked in the event that they discover out that persons are nonetheless consuming meat from slaughtered animals. They’ll suppose, ‘why aren’t you utilizing the clearly higher innovation that got here up with?’”
