Participated · Equity · Jun 2024

Ever After Foods develops a proprietary B2B technology platform to produce cultivated meat with claimed unmatched cost‑efficient scalability. Leveraging Pluri’s patented 3D cell expansion technology, the company moved from a pilot announced last year to an advanced scalable production platform for muscle and fat tissues. The platform reportedly enables partners to reduce production costs by over 90% while increasing productivity. Ever After Foods’ bioreactors are said to yield up to six times more protein and 700 times more lipids per cell versus other cultivated‑meat platforms, improving nutritional and flavor value. Pluri extended Ever After Foods’ license to include cultivated fish, expanding the company’s addressable product set. The company is positioned as a technology enabler serving partners across the cultivated‑food value chain.

Participated · Seed · Sep 2022

ProFuse Technology builds enabling technologies for cultivated muscle tissue, including media supplements and immortalized cell lines. The company has launched PROFUSE-S1, a media supplement to accelerate muscle growth, and PROFUSE-B8, a bovine myoblast cell line that replicates indefinitely without genetic modification. ProFuse says its solutions increase yield, shorten production cycles and reduce production costs, and it reports validation with numerous cultivated meat producers. The company plans to use recent funding to scale up production processes, complete work required for regulatory safety approval, and deepen industry collaborations. ProFuse was established in 2021 under the FRESH START foodtech incubator; its technology is based on six years of research at the Tzahor Lab of the Weizmann Institute of Science and the company is based in Yokneam, Israel. In October 2022 ProFuse secured $3 million in seed funding led by Green‑Circle, a New York–based foodtech fund. Profuse Technology is a Kiryat Shemona–based foodtech startup that develops supplements for cultivated meat media. Its additives aim to reduce cultivated meat cost by increasing produced meat mass and shortening production time via activation (patent pending) of a biochemical signaling pathway that accelerates muscle cell differentiation and enhances cell fusion. The company was founded in June 2021 as part of the FRESH START Foodtech incubator and its technology builds on six years of research at the Weizmann Institute led by co‑founders Dr. Tamar Eigler‑Hirsh, Professor Eldad Tzahor, and Dr. Uri Avinoam; Guy Nevo Michrowski is co‑founder and CEO. Profuse closed a $2.5M seed round, bringing total funding to date to $3.75M. The new funds will be used to collaborate with cultivated meat producers, pursue FDA regulatory approval, expand R&D staff and laboratories, and position the company to raise significant capital at the end of Q2 2023 to commercialize customer collaborations. The company aims to receive FDA approval and sell its products as early as mid‑2023. ProFuse Technology develops additives and solutions to accelerate muscle-fiber growth for cultured meat, reducing the number of production cycles and increasing protein content per cycle. Its technology aims to enhance production capacity and improve the quality of muscle fibers in each batch. The approach is based on six years of research at the Weizmann Institute of Science led by Professor Eldad Tzahor, Dr. Ori Avinoam and Dr. Tamar Eigler. ProFuse was established by Fresh Start FoodTech and initiated operations in June 2021. The company is supported by the Israeli Innovation Authority and is operated by Tnuva, Tempo, OurCrowd’s investment platform and Finistere Ventures. Financially, the company has raised $1.25M in external funding as reported.

Participated · Series A · Dec 2020

Remilk is a Tel Aviv–based food startup that produces dairy-identical milk proteins through a fermentation process. The company has developed a patented approach to scalable manufacturing that it says increases production efficiency and removes the need for dairy cows at industrial scale without compromising taste, functionality, or nutritional values. Remilk intends to scale production for commercial use by manufacturers of traditionally dairy-based products, including cheeses, yogurt, and ice cream. The company is positioned as a global leader in the development of animal-free dairy. Remilk was co-founded by Aviv Wolff, an entrepreneur with experience at several startups, and Ori Cohavi, PhD in biochemistry, who has worked in R&D at various biotech firms. The article reports a significant Series B financing that will support the company’s production scale-up plans. Remilk develops animal-free dairy by producing identical dairy proteins via a proprietary, patented microbial fermentation process. Its lab-made dairy proteins are designed to be functionally and sensorially identical to natural dairy and are used as starting materials by commercial manufacturers for cheese, yogurt and cream production. The company says its products are cholesterol-free and contain no lactose, antibiotics or growth hormones. Remilk highlights sustainability advantages, claiming its process requires 1% of the land, 4% of the feedstock and 10% of the water compared with traditional dairy. With new production and distribution partnerships, Remilk plans rapid expansion to meet global demand and to enable industrial-scale, cow-free dairy protein production.