Sustainable Foods Startup Impossible Foods Raises $108M In Its Latest Round

Sustainable food startup Impossible Foods raised $108 million in Series D funding, with Bill Gates kicking in some funding to help create meat and dairy foods from simple plant ingredients.

UBS led the round with participation from Viking Global Investors and existing investors such as including Horizons Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Gates. The company has raised $183 million to date.

CEO Patrick O. Brown founded the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup in 2011to offer consumers animal-free meat and dairy foods that use fewer of Earth’s finite resources to produce than animal-derived foods. Brown spent 25 years as a biochemistry professor at Stanford before co-founding a Hayward-based food company called Kite Hill, which developed nut milk products.

“This latest financing ensures that we have more than enough runway to bring our first products to market,” Brown said in a press release. “We are grateful to our visionary investors, whose support will enable us to transform the global food system by providing consumers with delicious and sustainable meat and dairy foods made directly from plants.”

Impossible food’s flagship product is a plant-based cheeseburger. It plans to launch its products in the United States in 2016 and then expand into other countries.

The funding follows Soylent, another major “alternative” food startup, which received $20 million in funding in January.

Source: Silicon Valley Business Journal, Gina Hall

Photo: According to its website, “Impossible Foods is making delicious meats and cheeses directly from simple plant ingredients. Our foods have the irresistibly delicious taste and texture of animal products, but no cholesterol, hormones, antibiotics, or slaughterhouse contaminants – and require far less land, water and energy to produce.” (Impossible Foods)