Asterix Foods Launches from Stealth with $4.2M to Redefine Precision Fermentation Through Plant Cell Bioreactors

Courtesy: Asterix

Israel’s Asterix Foods emerges from stealth with $4.2M in Seed funding led by CPT Capital to revolutionize precision fermentation costs using plant cell bioreactors that slash CAPEX by 95%, reduce energy use, and enable modular, low-cost bioactive protein production.

As the race to scale sustainable protein production intensifies, a new Israeli startup is stepping into the spotlight with a radically different approach. Asterix Foods, founded in 2022 and now emerging from stealth, has closed a $4.2 million Seed round led by CPT Capital, with participation from ReGen Ventures, SOSV, Grok Ventures, and the Israeli Innovation Authority. The company’s breakthrough platform could reshape how high-value bioactive proteins are produced, slashing costs, timelines, and complexity that have long plagued precision fermentation.

The global market for bioactive proteins, used in food, nutrition, and health products, is booming. These complex molecules deliver functionality beyond simple nutrition, from emulsification and flavor enhancement to therapeutic properties. Until now, most have been made through precision fermentation, where microbes are genetically engineered to produce proteins inside bioreactors. The process works, but it’s capital-intensive: building a single large-scale facility can cost between $125 million and $500 million, with long construction timelines and steep operational demands.

Asterix Foods offers a clean break from that model. Instead of modifying microbes, it uses plant cell suspension cultures inside Massively Parallel Modular Bioreactors (MPMB), compact, modular systems that can produce equal or greater protein yields at a fraction of the cost. The company claims its system reduces facility expenditure by over 95% and development timelines from years to months, while eliminating the need for costly GMP cleanrooms.

“Bioactivity makes these proteins so powerful for the food industry, unlocking new applications in food, nutrition, and health,” said Dan Even, CEO of Asterix Foods, who holds a Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering from the Weizmann Institute of Science. “Our system shows how future production facilities can be deployed quickly, flexibly, and at dramatically lower cost.”

Unlike microbes, plant cells evolved as multicellular organisms, giving them the complex cellular machinery needed to produce glycoproteins and other high-value molecules that are difficult, or impossible, for microbes to synthesize efficiently. They also have a natural resilience that reduces contamination risk, enabling production in standard food-grade environments instead of specialized stainless-steel fermentation plants.

In practice, that means production doesn’t need to happen in sprawling industrial zones. Asterix’s pilot facility operates in an office building in downtown Tel Aviv, demonstrating that protein manufacturing can be flexible, local, and low-impact.

The company’s modular bioreactors also deliver key operational advantages:

• Unbound by geography: Facilities can be deployed anywhere, from non-arable regions to urban manufacturing hubs, cutting emissions and transport costs.

• Scalable by design: Modular units let customers start small and expand gradually, running multiple proteins on a single line.

• Continuous production: Unlike conventional systems that pause for cleaning cycles, Asterix’s setup runs year-round with minimal downtime.

• Low resource intensity: Operating at room temperature, the bioreactors drastically cut energy and water use.

  
  

For investors like CPT Capital, long a champion of animal-free food systems, Asterix represents a timely evolution. “Asterix’s capex-light and modular system gives them and their customers flexibility to locate production exactly where it’s needed,” said Harry Kalms, Investor at CPT Capital. “Companies are recognizing the limits of today’s protein supply chain and looking for ways to produce high-value, bioactive proteins at a fraction of the cost, and at unprecedented volumes.”

That scalability is what excites Po Bronson, General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director of IndieBio, which has supported several alternative protein pioneers. “Plant cell suspension cultures are already used by at least 16 global corporations for producing everything from vaccines to food pigments,” he noted. “Asterix is now pushing this platform further, opening new opportunities to produce alternative proteins with unprecedented cost-efficiency and precision. Even small facilities can produce multiple proteins in parallel.”

With its platform validated across several protein types, Asterix is now moving into corporate collaborations to target proteins critical for future food and health supply chains, including those not currently available at an industrial scale. The fresh capital will fund the expansion of its Tel Aviv pilot and the delivery of protein samples to partners.

A Growing Hub for Precision Fermentation Alternatives Asterix joins a growing cohort of Israeli and global startups working to lower the cost and complexity of precision fermentation, one of the most promising yet capital-intensive technologies in sustainable food production. Companies like Remilk and Imagindairy have made Israel a global hotspot for alternative dairy proteins, while others, such as Tiamat Sciences and Arkeon Biotechnologies, are developing low-cost, distributed production systems that tackle scale-up bottlenecks from different biological angles. Asterix’s plant cell bioreactor platform adds a new dimension to this landscape, offering a viable alternative that merges plant biology and biomanufacturing scalability in a compact, energy-efficient format.

For an industry struggling to bridge the gap between innovation and industrialization, Asterix’s approach could prove transformative, offering a new playbook for distributed, low-cost, and resilient biomanufacturing that brings the promise of precision biology one step closer to reality.