GALY Raises $33M From Bill Gates’ BEV, H&M, and Inditex to Advance Climate-Resilient Cultivated Cotton
GALY, a plant-cell culture startup based in Brazil and Boston, USA, has raised $33 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round to advance its proprietary platform for cultivated cotton from lab to pre-industrial scale. Additionally, the funds will support expanding R&D efforts to improve the quality of “GALY Cotton” and develop other sustainable alternatives to traditional crop-derived commodities. The funding round was led by Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), with …
Foray Bioscience Raises $3M to Restore Forests With Plant Cell Culture Tech
Boston-based Foray Bioscience, a startup leveraging plant cell culture to restore forests and, thus, secure plant supply chains, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by the Australian VC ReGen Ventures. Other participants, including Engine Ventures, Susquehanna Sustainable Investments, Understorey, Superorganism, and additional investors, backed the biotech in this round, bringing its total to $3.875 million. With a background in plant-based materials research from MIT and Draper Laboratory, Dr. Ashley Beckwith (CEO) founded Foray …
6th Industrializing Cultivated Meat & Seafood Summit: 150+ Industry Leaders Gather in Boston to Chart Path to Commercial Viability
The 6th Industrializing Cultivated Meat & Seafood Summit, a conference that supports the industry across the value chain, has unveiled this year’s speakers and comprehensive program and opened registration for participants. It will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, at the Hilton Boston from August 27th to 29th, 2024. The event will bring together 150+ C-Suite food tech leaders, CPG, innovation leads, and technology providers, including Umami Bioworks, the Good …
USDA’s First Cultivated Meat Center “NICA” Opens Applications for Research Grants
The first US government-funded center for cultivated meat, the USDA’s National Institute of Cellular Agriculture (NICA) at Tufts University, has announced the opening of applications for its Seed Grant Program 2024. Seed-level funding grants of $25,000 or $50,000 will be awarded to support fundamental or applied research in cellular agriculture, precision fermentation, and alternative proteins. Only primary investigators not associated with NICA are eligible to submit proposals. The new projects …
Motif FoodWorks Partners with IngredientWerks to Explore Creating Animal-Free Heme From Corn
Food tech startup Motif FoodWorks announces it is partnering with IngredientWerks, an agtech ingredients company, to develop high-value plant-based proteins for the alt-protein market. Through the research partnership, the two companies say they will explore new ways to optimize heme protein production through molecular farming. According to Motif, the partners have begun an exploratory study aimed at recreating Motif’s HEMAMI™ ingredient using corn. HEMAMI is used to give plant-based meats …