Skip to main content

Deck.blue brings a TweetDeck experience to Bluesky users

With over 3 million users and plans to open up more broadly in the months ahead, Bluesky is still establishing itself as an alternative to Twitter/X. However, that hasn’t stopped the developer community from embracing the project and building tools to meet the needs of those fleeing the now Elon Musk-owned social network, formerly known […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/TBbEAPF
Post a Comment

Better Dairy slices into new funding for animal-free cheeses

Food tech company Better Dairy is closer to getting its aged and hard cheeses into the testing phase after securing $22 million in Series A funding.

The U.K.-based company, founded in 2019 by Jevan Nagarajah, is still in the R&D phase of developing animal-free cheeses using precision fermentation. We initially got to know Nagarajah and Better Dairy back in 2020 when the company raised £1.6 million in seed funding in a round led by Happiness Capital.

At the time, he explained that animal-based dairy farming was “hugely unsustainable,” needing 650 liters of water to produce just 1 liter of milk and utilizing a process that emits the equivalent of over 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

Instead, Better Dairy is using precision fermentation to produce products that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy, Nagarajah said. The process is similar to brewing beer, with the end result being dairy.

While other food tech companies are tackling softer cheeses like mozzarella or whey proteins, Better Daily is targeting hard cheeses, a process that is more complex, in a more sustainable way.

Better Dairy

Image Credits: Better Dairy

“We see limitations in hard cheese, similar to trying to create animal-free steak,” Nagarajah added. “By building a team that includes a chief scientific officer with 30 years of expertise making proteins for the pharmaceutical industry, we realized we could go complex and do it consciously.”

Happiness Capital is back for the Series A, this time as a participant to the co-lead of RedAlpine and Vorwerk. Joining them are Manta Ray, Acequia Capital and Stray Dog Capital.

Better Dairy is not alone in going after the dairy space. Companies like Clara Foods, NotCo, Climax Foods and Perfect Day are all working on animal-alternative cheese and dairy products. However, Nagarajah believes that the new funding, aimed at advancing the precision fermentation technology, will help the company get out ahead of the competition to become the first player to launch hard cheeses in this space.

The company is investing the capital into expanding its workforce from eight people to 35 and into a new 6,000-square-foot laboratory and office space in East London.

Better Dairy is working on the science to nail down texture and then maturation so that all of the components can come together under one product that has a shelf life. Nagarajah is optimistic that the precision fermentation will get to unit economics — a.k.a. price parity with similar artisanal cheeses — in the next 18 months or so.

“We need the right space and equipment to upgrade our science,” he added. “It is not just about being animal-free and sustainable, but also delicious. If it tastes better then it becomes a no-brainer and a benchmark for success. There is a benefit for doing it the right way because if not, the time it takes to unwind it all could take years.”

Looking Beyond Meat, the future of food investment looks pretty cheesy



from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/U8qjDak
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ivella is the latest fintech focused on couples banking, with a twist

Money can make people moody. There are layers of privilege, or lack thereof, that can make even the simplest conversation about bills feel like baggage to deal with. Translate that discomfort to relationships and it can feel like an awkward — and fragmented — dance on who pays which bill when (and how). Ivella , a Santa Monica-based startup, wants to build banking products for couples to take away some of these tensions. Led by CEO and co-founder Kahlil Lalji , the startup is launching with a split account product that just raised $3.5 million in funding from Anthemis, Financial Venture Studio and Soma Capital. Other investors include Y Combinator, DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder and Gumroad CEO Sahil Lavingia. Lalji, who helped creators with digital content before jumping into the world of fintech, says that the startup was born out of his own frustration at the expectation that couples would just use Venmo unless they were married. The best solution, so far, has been joint accounts...
Post a Comment
Read more

Apple tvOS 16.4 update gives light-sensitive users a ‘Dim Flashing Lights’ feature

Apple released the tvOS 16.4 update to the public yesterday, bringing various improvements to the system, including a new “Dim Flashing Light” feature. The new accessibility option can detect flashes of light or strobe effects and then automatically dim the display of a video. The “Dim Flashing Light” feature is notable a s it will likely benefit Apple TV users with light sensitivity or, possibly, users with epileptic seizures. According to the Epilepsy Foundation , 2.7 million Americans have epilepsy, and approximately 3-5% of them are photosensitive. Photosensitive epilepsy is when seizures are triggered by flashing lights, patterns or color changes. Flashing lights can also cause headaches and migraines. The tvOS update is available for the Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD. It can be installed manually by going to “Settings,” “System” and then “Software Update.” If your Apple TV is set to update automatically, then it should be downloaded already. The other updates weren’t as signi...
Post a Comment
Read more

6 VCs explain why embedded insurance isn’t the only hot opportunity in insurtech

If you think embedded insurance is the only hot thing in insurtech these days, we’ve got a surprise in store for you: While it’s true that startups that help sell insurance together with other products and services are enjoying tailwinds, there are plenty of other opportunities in the space, several investors told TechCrunch+. You see, insurtech startups often need to take into account the myriad rules and regulations in place when they seek to innovate and embed insurance into products, which might make it difficult to pull it off. And given the current emphasis on achieving cost efficiency to extend runways in the broader startup ecosystem, it appears investors are open to insurtech startups that can build a sustainable business model, regardless of it including embedded insurance. “Insurtech startups that do not offer embedded insurance, and rather provide other innovative solutions will still attract VC funding this year, especially if they can show cost-efficient and sustainabl...
Post a Comment
Read more