EVERY Co. cracked the code of animal protein-free products and received US$175 million in revenue – TechCrunch

2021-12-08 11:04:16 By : Ms. Mandy Ye

The EVERY Co. is a company that develops sophisticated fermentation technology to produce animal-free protein such as eggs. 2021 will usher in a good year.

First, the company, formerly known as Clara Foods, entered into a deal with BioBrew in April. BioBrew is an investment of Anheuser-Busch InBev investment arm ZX Ventures to brew its animal-free protein on a large scale. EVERY's first egg protein will be launched as a co-branded ingredient with the first retail customer later this year.

Then today, it announced a $175 million oversubscription of Series C financing. The investment was jointly led by new investor McWin and existing investor Rage Capital. Other new and old investors have joined them, including Temasek, Wheatsheaf Group, SOSV and TO Ventures. According to EVERY, Prosus Ventures also provided funding for this funding, marking its first investment in synthetic biology.

The latest investment brings EVERY's total capital to 233 million U.S. dollars. We introduced the company in 2015, when it raised $1.7 million in seed funding. Then, it received another US$15 million in Series A financing and US$40 million in Series B financing in 2019. It was renamed The EVERY Co. in October.

At the time, CEO and founder Arturo Elizondo said in a press release: “Our new brand conveys our vision to fundamentally change the food system in the 21st century so that everyone around the world can enjoy them. The food we know and love without harming our food. Planets or animals are in the process."

Arturo Elizondo, founder and CEO of The EVERY Co. Image source: The EVERY Co.

Arturo Elizondo, founder and CEO of The EVERY Co. Image source: The EVERY Co.

In addition to the name change, the company also launched the first animal-free egg protein in November, named EVERY ClearEgg, for the first retail sale through a partnership with the cold-pressed juice brand Pressed, which makes EVERY products into smoothies.

Elizondo told TechCrunch that this is the culmination of the company's seven years of work. He added that the B series in 2019 is to prove technology, and now with the C series, it can bring products to the market and use capital to promote scale.

Also in the past two years, EVERY has grown from pre-revenue to revenue from 30 employees to 60 employees. All its products have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and are currently sold in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In addition, the company now has two products being commercialized, including one pepsin and one under development, he added.

The new funds will enable the company to expand its production scale, commercialize more products in its product line, and expand its technology to new food applications.

"We are now focusing on scaling to drive adoption," Elizondo said. "There is a lot of media coverage around B2C, but companies like Kellogg's and General Mills want to catch up and launch such products, but the infrastructure has not kept up. In order for these technologies to work and transition, you must have Matching scale. For us, we have already started to install Lego bricks."

At the same time, the egg market is still dominated by eggs-more than 1.3 trillion eggs are produced globally every year-and everyone is working hard to change this. The scale of the company's salary increase shows that its technology is working and receiving attention.

It joins up with other companies working on similar animal-free egg products, such as Simply Eggless and Eat Just, which raised $200 million earlier in the summer, and Berlin food technology company Perfeggt, which is preparing to launch its egg-free product in the first year . The first quarter of 2022. It received $2.8 million in November.

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Elizondo believes that more companies in this field are "ebb and flow" rather than competition. On the contrary, the battle is about awareness and getting the products just right, so they can be in a 1:1 ratio with real eggs.

"You can't just make delicious products, because eggs are a functional ingredient in almost everything," he added. "In order to dominate the market, we must allow consumers to transform and have a 1:1 ratio, so that we can maximize the ability of existing companies to compete for their money."

Gabriel Ruimy, managing partner of Rage Capital, said in a written statement: "It is rare that a company can credibly claim to revolutionize a century-old industry." "The Arturo and EVERY teams are doing this."

"The catering industry is one of the early adopters of new food technology and its introduction to consumers," added Henry McGovern, founder of McWin Food Ecosystem Fund and AmRest, which operates more than 2,300 restaurants worldwide. “Given our deep roots in the restaurant and as a prolific investor in leading alternative protein companies, McWin has the unique ability to support everyone’s ambitious plan to introduce their products to the global menu. Eggs are not only ubiquitous, but difficult to replace. . We see the great potential of every revolutionary technology."

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