Dutch startup Farmless emerges from stealth securing €1.2 million in pre-seed funding. The startup uses fermentation to produce carbon-negative, functional proteins with a complete amino acid profile.
The round was led by German investors Revent, Nucleus Capital, and Possible Ventures. In addition to the leading investors, HackCapital, Sustainable Food Ventures, VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund, TET Ventures, and Jenny Saft through the Atomico Angel program, Ron Shigeta, Martin Weber, Rick Bernstein, Nadine Geiser, Joy Faucher, Michele Tarawneh, Alexander Hoffmann, and Christian Stiebner also participated.
"We’re proud to be backed by an amazing group of experienced climate tech investors who share our mission. With our fermentation platform we aim to dramatically outperform animal agriculture and reliably produce low-cost proteins at a planetary scale. We believe this technology has the potential to end factory farming, rewild our planet and draw down gigatons of carbon," commented Farmless CEO and founder Adnan Oner.
The Amsterdam-based air protein startup will use the fresh funds to emerge from stealth and develop a novel method to convert CO2, hydrogen, and renewable energy into protein.
Farmless is pushing the boundaries of fermentation by using a liquid feedstock that can be made with renewable energy, called electro ecology, instead of sugar. As a result, the company claims that its process is significantly more resource and land efficient than traditional animal farming and uses 10-25 times less land than plant-based protein production and 250-500 times less land than animal protein harvesting.
Since most agricultural land is currently used to feed animals, Farmless' initial products are designed to replace animal protein by producing proteins, carbohydrates, beneficial fats, vitamins, and minerals.