From AgFunderNews, July 22:
Plant-based cheesemaker Nobell Foods nets $75m from a16z, AgFunder & Breakthrough Energy
Disclosure: AFN’s parent company AgFunder is an investor in Nobell Foods.
Alt-protein startup Nobell Foods has raised $75 million in a Series B round led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) – the climate-focused investment group founded by Bill Gates and backed by numerous other billionaires including space travelers Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, as well as Mukesh Ambani, Michael Bloomberg, Ray Dalio, Jack Ma, and Masayoshi Son.
New investors joining the fray included Chinese private equity giant Hillhouse Capital Group and US actor Robert Downey Jr’s Footprint Coalition.
Also participating in the round were existing investors AgFunder, Andreesen Horowitz (a16z), Pear VC, New Crop Capital, Germin8 Ventures, Fifty Years, Mission Bay Capital, and Matt Bellamy – frontman of UK rock band Muse.
Nobell’s board — which previously comprised the startup’s founder and CEO, Magi Richani, and a16z partner Vijay Pande — will double in size following the Series B round. BEV’s Chris Rivest — a veteran biotech founder and investor — will join the board along with serial entrepreneur Kyle Vogt, the founder and chief technology officer of General Motors‘ self-driving subsidiary Cruise AutomationFounded in 2016 as Alpine Roads, the recently renamed Nobell Foods has largely remained in stealth mode until today’s funding announcement....
....MUCH MORE
This is a bit more sophisticated than the alt-cheese in the story I've retold a few times. last seen in April 2021: Today In Lesser-Known Derivatives: "US futures traders gorge on cheddar amid race to lock in supplies"
*****
....We don't have many posts* on the dairy business, every couple years or so I break out the "What's Mooving" headline but the business, at least the way (whey?) it's structured in the U.S. is tough to trade from a portfolio perspective. In addition it seems to foment (ferment?) some simply awful puns in folks who write about it.
The futures are currently in backwardation, not that anyone cares....
*Back in 2010 we had a post, "CME Group expands dairy complex with cheese futures" which I intro'd with:
Years ago I heard of a Chicago company that made a whey-based artificial cheese.
Apparently the operation was headed by a mad scientist type who had come up with the formula but had no marketing ability.
He was producing the stuff and not selling any, converting all the investors cash into this "analog" goop and storing it in Chicago area warehouses.
Then the Chernobyl reactor blew, the price of whey skyrocketed, I've no idea what the connection was, the company went broke and the receivers opened the warehouses to find tons of this 'cheeze', semi-molten in the summer heat.
That's what I thought of when I saw this story, tons of the stuff oozing out of bonded warehouses. No connection of course, just a visual....
