Impossible Foods looks set to raise $500 million in its latest funding round. The company is anticipating a valuation of $7 billion, as reported last night by Bloomberg, though terms have not yet been finalised.
The new round follows on from two successful fundraises last year — Impossible raised $200 million in August, and a huge $500 million a few months previously. The company is also reportedly preparing for a $10 billion IPO.
If the round goes as expected, Impossible’s value will exceed that of its main competitor Beyond Meat. Beyond is currently valued at around $6.2 billion, with shares recently falling after it lowered its predicted revenue for Q3. The company says it is still struggling with the impact of Covid-19, along with operational challenges and lower retail orders.
Impossible and Beyond have always played the market competitively, going head-to-head to get new products to market. This summer, the companies raced to launch plant-based nuggets in what was labelled “Chicken Wars”. Since then, Impossible has launched its plant-based sausage across the US and expanded into the Middle East. The company has also revealed it is working on plant-based whole-muscle meat products, which are notoriously difficult to get right.
In April this year, a Reuters report suggested Impossible Foods may have been preparing for a public listing which could either take the form of an IPO or a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), with the report claiming that Impossible had been receiving the help of a financial adviser to discuss mergers with SPACs, and noting that the SPAC option may “dilute existing Impossible Foods shareholders, however, by a greater extent than an IPO,” the sources added.
