Investors Serve Impossible Foods $300M In Funding

Investors are still hungry for fake meat as they serve up a fresh $300 million in funding for Impossible Foods, a company best known for its plant-based “Impossible Burger.” (Reuters first broke the news this morning.)

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Founded in 2011, Impossible Foods is focused on developing plant-based substitutes for meat and dairy products. The Bay Area-based company has now raised a total of $687.5 million from a host of backers including Khosla Ventures, UBS, Bill Gates, Serena Williams and singer Katy Perry.

Impossible Foods’ super-sized round follows on the heels of a blockbuster IPO by fellow meatless protein maker Beyond Meat, which has seen its shares skyrocket since its public debut on May 2 (trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol: BYND).

Still, Impossible Foods CFO David Lee told Reuters the company isn’t rushing to go public, saying: “We believe in self-reliance. Being ready to go public is a priority for the company because we need to be operating at the highest level of rigor.”

In general, companies creating plant-based substitutes for dairy and meat are whetting investors’ appetites. In February, we reported on how biotech unicorn Ginkgo Bioworks launched a new spinoff called Motif Ingredients that will work on developing proteins that can serve as meat and dairy replacements. Boston-based Motif started out the gate with $90 million in Series A funding.

Last June, Crunchbase News’ Joanna Glasner reported that up until that point just more than $600 million in known funding had gone to what we’ve dubbed the “alt-meat” sector, according to Crunchbase data. Actual investment levels may be quite a bit higher since strategic investors don’t always reveal round size. She also wrote in August 2017 about how some of the companies in the space had raised substantial sums of venture capital.

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias