New Culture: Cow Cheese without the Cow

8/20/2021 11:39:00 PM

Cheese Made Without Milk - Attracted $3.5 Million in Investment

New Culture is making cow cheese without the cow.

Microorganisms are used to make casein protein, which blends vegetable fat and sugar to produce a cheese that tastes like dairy cheese and is cholesterol- and lactose-free.

It is said that they plan to make a lactose-free, digestible and dairy-free cheese, with the first product expected to be mozzarella cheese.

New Culture

Enter Silicon Valley-based food startup New Culture, which is striving to engineer vegan cheese in a lab. “For plant-based cheeses, the biggest problem is that both the texture and taste are off. The nutritional profile is lacking too, as these cheeses often have little to no protein content,” say co-founders Inja Radman and Matt Gibson, who started their comapany in January 2019. “The key component that gives dairy cheese the traits we love – the texture, stretchiness and mouthfeel – are casein proteins, which are found in cow’s milk. They don’t have a good replacement in the plant-based world.”

To that end, the duo is experimenting with microbial fermentation, a synthetic technique that enables microflora like bacteria and fungi to express casein proteins. These are then turned into larger structures called casein micelles – one of the key building blocks of cow’s milk.

General Information

Headquarters : San Francisco, California
Founders : Inja Radman, Matt Gibson
Categories : Food and Beverage, Food Tech

Funding

Investors : Bee Partners, Boost VC, CPT Capital, Evolv Ventures, Mayfield Fund, SOSV
Funding Rounds (2) - $3.5M
Sep 10, 2019 Seed Round / $3.5M
Apr 1, 2019 Seed Round