Celleste Bio Unveils World’s First Cell-Cultured Cocoa Butter, Offering a Climate-Resilient Future for Chocolate

Courtesy: Celleste Bio

The price of chocolate has never been this volatile. After a 400% surge in 2024 driven by drought, disease, and declining yields across West Africa, cocoa prices briefly reached record highs before easing. Yet the long-term outlook remains grim: erratic weather, soil degradation, and aging trees threaten the world’s most beloved treat.

Now, Celleste Bio, an Israeli food tech startup, believes it has found a way to make chocolate both climate-resilient and future-proof, without compromising taste.

At the EIT Food Next Bite Summit in Brussels, the company unveiled the world’s first cell-cultured, chocolate-grade cocoa butter, made not from beans, but from real cocoa cells grown in a bioreactor. The result, the company says, is bio-identical to conventional cocoa butter, with the same fatty acid profile, melt-in-your-mouth texture, and signature “snap” of premium chocolate.

“This breakthrough proves that science can grow and produce ingredients that mirror nature with integrity and transparency,” said Michal Berresi Golomb, CEO of Celleste Bio. “It’s a new way to make chocolate that respects both people and planet.”

From Cocoa Pod to Petri Dish

Founded in 2022 by Hanne Volpin, Orna Harel, Avishay Levy, and Daphna Michaeli, with support from The Trendlines Group, Celleste Bio uses a blend of biotech, agtech, and AI to recreate cocoa production in a controlled environment.

The company begins with real cocoa cells extracted from selected varietals and cultivates them in nutrient-rich bioreactors, much like fermenting beer or brewing wine. The cells feed on a mix of vitamins, minerals, sugar, and water, producing cocoa butter and powder without the need for deforestation, land expansion, or chemical inputs.

Even more remarkably, once harvested, the cells continue to regenerate, creating a closed-loop system with virtually zero waste. According to Golomb, one or two beans’ worth of cells can yield the same amount of cocoa butter that would normally require four tonnes of cocoa and 10,000 square meters of land.

Rethinking Risk in the Chocolate Supply Chain

Chocolate may be a luxury, but for producers, it’s becoming a liability. Cocoa butter, the key fat responsible for chocolate’s richness and texture, accounts for nearly half of the $16 billion spent annually on cocoa ingredients. When harvests fail, the entire value chain feels the impact.

That fragility is precisely what Celleste Bio aims to solve. “Technology doesn’t replace traditional farming,” said Howard Yano Shapiro, former Chief Agricultural Officer at Mars. “It’s an insurance policy against disruptions caused by pests, disease, and climate instability.”

By offering a stable, traceable, and scalable source of real cocoa ingredients, Celleste Bio hopes to supplement, not supplant, the agricultural system, giving chocolate makers a safety net against future crises.

A Strategic Partner in Mondelēz

Celleste Bio has raised $15 million to date, including investment from Mondelēz International, the snacking powerhouse behind Oreo, Milka, and Cadbury. Mondelēz has also served as a strategic design partner, ensuring the startup’s innovation aligns with the sensory and performance standards of commercial chocolate manufacturing.

The company is now building a pilot facility with a 1,000-litre production capacity, designed to scale both R&D and small-batch commercial runs. Regulatory processes are underway in the US, EU, UK, and Israel, with market launch targeted for 2027.

Celleste plans to commercialize two product lines: a cost-parity “drop-in” cocoa butter for industrial use, and a premium variant tailored to high-end confectioners seeking climate-aligned ingredients.

Beyond Celleste: A New Era for Chocolate

Celleste Bio joins a small but growing circle of startups racing to reinvent cocoa. California Cultured, for example, has inked a decade-long deal with Japan’s Meiji to supply cell-based cocoa powder, while Kokomodo, another Israeli firm, was recently acquired by Pluri. In Switzerland, Food Brewer is developing cell-based chocolate with support from luxury chocolatier Felchlin, and Finnish group Fazer is running early R&D on cultured cocoa cells.

The momentum reflects a broader shift toward biotech-enabled resilience in food systems, especially for commodities that are resource-intensive, volatile, and deeply entwined with deforestation. Chocolate, after all, ranks just behind beef in global greenhouse gas emissions.

“Long-term instability is the new normal,” Golomb said. “We can’t rely on the old model of extraction and expansion. What we need now are solutions that make chocolate sustainable from the inside out.”

The Future Is Sweet, and Grown in a Lab

Celleste Bio’s innovation sits at the intersection of climate adaptation, technology, and sensory tradition. It doesn’t replace the joy of chocolate; it safeguards it.

If successful, it could give chocolate makers and consumers a way to enjoy sweetness without guilt, deforestation, or fear of scarcity.

As Golomb put it, “Our goal isn’t to replace the farmer. It’s to protect chocolate’s future. If we want to keep enjoying the taste we love, we need to evolve how we make it.”

From West Africa to Tel Aviv to the stainless steel of bioreactors, chocolate’s next chapter is already being written; one cell at a time.