A Finnish food technology company has a bold idea for the future: protein made from thin air.
What’s happening:
- Finland based food technology company Solar Foods has raised €8M in a crowd funding round
- The round also saw participation from some of Solar Food’s early investors including Happiness Capital, Lifeline Ventures, VTT Ventures and Fazer
The big idea:
- Solar Foods is aiming to combine clean tech and food tech to change the way protein is produced by leveraging renewable energy and bioprocess engineering
- Their first technical breakthrough came from finding a way to turn emission free electricity and captured carbon dioxide into nutrient dense calories, essentially turning air into protein
- Solar’s Foods flagship proprietary ingredient is known as Solein, which is a cellular agriculture derived protein that can be produced anywhere and is not derived from a plant or an animal but rather from a natural single cell organism
Why it matters:
- Finding ways to produce protein sources that don’t rely on traditional farming and agriculture is one of the most important problems to solve for lowering carbon emissions globally
Going deeper:
- One of the largest backers of Solar Foods is publicly listed Agronomics (LSE: ANIC) which was founded by billionaire Jim Mellon
- Agronomics has put in €6M in venture capital into Solar Foods since inceptions
The intrigue:
- Solar Food’s believes that their breakthrough science could unlock the capability to produce protein in space and on planets other than Earth
