Ingredients

Savor Successfully Develops Dairy & Plant-Free Butter From CO2 and Hydrogen

California’s Savor, a startup revolutionizing the production of fat with agriculture and animal-free solutions, has developed a butter prototype made from CO2 and hydrogen, that is said to offer the taste and functional properties of dairy butter.

Henrik Bennetsen (CEO), Kathleen Alexander (CTO), and Ian McKay (CSO) founded the startup in San Jose in 2022 to offer a solution to industrial fats that could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

“I’ve tasted Savor’s products, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter” – Bill Gates

Animal fats have a well-known negative impact on the climate; meanwhile, many plant-based alternatives currently on the market are made from canola, sunflower, coconut, and palm crops that contribute significantly to GHG emissions and fuel deforestation and biodiversity loss. Other methods, such as precision fermentation and cultivated fats require expensive facilities and economies of scale.

In contrast, Savor leverages an innovative thermochemical method that involves pulling CO2 from the air and hydrogen from water, then heating and oxidizing them to create fats, starting with butter. The startup’s agriculture-free process is said to release very few GHGs while it uses less than a thousandth of the water for crops. Additionally,  it can be installed anywhere, regardless of climatic or geopolitical challenges.

Savor's butter prototype
© Ailin Zhang

Efficient and least polluting

Supported by significant VC funding and praised by influential figures like Bill Gates, Savor’s approach offers a promising alternative to both animal-based and plant-based fats, with broader implications for the sustainability of food production.

Bill Gates wrote in a blog post: “I’ve tasted Savor’s products, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter.  Savor has a good chance of success here because the key steps of their fat-production process already work in other industries.”

According to PitchBook, Savor has raised over $33 million from BEV and other VC firms like Climate Capital and CPT Capital. Other investors include Synthesis Capital, which led the company’s recent Series A financing round, and Bill Gates’ VC firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV).

As explained by Synthesis Capital, Savor’s thermochemical approach offers lower production costs compared to biological systems and potential long-term cost parity with commodity oils. It has a reduced scale-up risk because it can utilize existing commercial-scale chemical processes, reducing the scalability challenges that other techs face. But more importantly, the synthetic butter promises great taste and functional properties.

Beyond butter, Savor aims to develop alternatives for milk, ice cream, cheese, meat, and tropical oils, potentially revolutionizing sustainability in multiple categories.

“We start with a source of carbon, like carbon dioxide, and use a little bit of heat and hydrogen to form chains which are then blended with oxygen from the air to make the fats & oils we know, love, and drool over. That’s how we get rich, delightful ingredients without animal suffering, palm plantations, or dangerous chemicals. All in the most efficient, most resilient, least polluting way known to science,” the startup says on its website.

Bookmark
See all bookmarks

Share