US: Mission Barns raises $24m in Series A

  • 8 April 2021
Funding will be used to scale up and commercialise the company’s technology and build a pilot manufacturing plant in the Bay Area
Mission Barns
Image from Mission Barns’ website

Cellular agriculture company Mission Barns has raised $24 million in Series A funding from investors including Lever VC, Gullspang Re:Food, Humboldt Fund, Green Monday Ventures, Enfini Ventures, and a European meat company.

Other investors in the round included Blue Ledge Capital, Prithvi Ventures, and Joyance Partners. A number of seed investors increased their stake in the company including Global Founders Capital, Point Nine Capital, Better Ventures and Cantos Ventures.

Berkeley, California-based Mission Fat stated it will use the funding to scale up and commercialise its technology and build a pilot manufacturing plant in the Bay Area.

Mission Barns is focused on cultivating animal fat without the animal. Its technology platform involves starting with a handful of pork, poultry, or beef cells and feeding them a plant-based feedstock inside a cultivator. Over a short period of time, the novel process creates real, pure animal fat with the mouthfeel and flavour of meat, using a fraction of the carbon emissions, water and land required by conventional animal agriculture.

The first commercial application of Mission Fat is in plant-based meat. The company has developed products incorporating Mission Fat in various categories on its own and through collaboration with meat companies and plant protein partners. Applications include: bacon, breakfast patties, burgers, nuggets, dumplings, hot dogs, poultry sausages and meatballs.

Mission Fat’s chief executive Eitan Fischer said: “Time and again, we see that the addition of Mission Fat to plant proteins makes alternative meat products in any number of categories far outperform the incumbent plant-based options.”

Nick Cooney, managing partner of Lever VC, added: “I’ve been sampling plant-based meats for 20 years from a huge variety of brands globally, and have never tasted anything as meat-like as products containing Mission Fat. This is going to be a game-changer for the alternative meat sector, because it’s going to help brands around the world have a dramatically better product almost overnight.”