The company hopes this biotechnology platform will provide means to meet the U.N. SDGs in the food sector and to achieve democratization of cellular agriculture, in which citizens can produce cellular agriculture products of any categories including food, medical, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, chemicals and materials.
The funds will be used in research and development of cell culture technology, investment in facilities and equipment, staffing and operational costs. CulNet System units will be provided to clients by rent or on a sales basis to roll out the cellular agriculture infrastructure. Yuki Hanyu, CEO, IntegriCulture Inc., states, “The funds will be used to build accessible cellular agriculture to make 2021 the Year One of democratized cellular agriculture.”
Rob Leclerc, Founding Partner at AgFunder stated: “I don’t think anyone else on the planet has given more thought to how to solve the problems of cultivated meat than Yuki. Bringing down the cost of cell culture media is the central challenge for all cultivated meat companies and IntegriCulture has the most elegant solution we’ve seen to solve this problem.”
J. Skyler Fernandes, General Partner, VU Venture Partners adds: “IntegriCulture’s technology makes the production of cultured meat affordable at scale, and will rapidly increase the commercialization for the next generation of meat brands.”
Series A investors
- Beyond Next Ventures
- NH Foods
- Real Tech Fund
- AgFunder
- Mr. Naruhisa Nakagawa (Caygan Capital Ltd. CEO and CIO), investment as an individual investor
- Hiroshima Venture Capital
- VU Venture Partners and other investors
Future milestones:
-Food grade culture medium and cultured serum:
-Launch of food grade culture medium “SpaceSalt” in summer 2020 on e-commerce platforms including crowdfunding
-Launch of cosmetics product based on cultured serum in spring 2021, by direct-to-consumer model
-Cell-based meat: Launch of cell-based foie gras in 2021, processed meat in 2023 and steak in 2025
-Uni-CulNet: CulNet System technology is deployed to clients from May 2020 and will be updated every two to three years for larger scale and lower costs.
– Further milestones: Options such as cultured serum supplements, cell-cultured non-food products such as leather and fur, and cell-cultured products for medical applications remain open.
