Australian alternative protein company Vow has announced raising $49.2 million in a Series A funding round co-anchored by venture capital investors Blackbird and Prosperity7 Ventures.
Toyota Ventures, HostPlus Super, NGS Super, and Pavilion Capital also participated in the funding round that comes almost two years after Vow raised $6 million in seed funding, backed by Square Peg Capital, Tenacious Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, and Grok Ventures.
The three-year-old company develops cultivated meat from the cells of kangaroo, water buffalo, and alpaca, among others. It then adds essential micronutrients that help create a tasty textured meat profile.
“We produce meat that is tastier, more nutritious, more sustainable, and ultimately more affordable than what we eat today,” the company says on its website.
Vow plans to introduce its first brand, Morsel, to Singapore restaurants by the end of this year. Morsel is a Japanese umai quail meat positioned as a new type of meat.
In 2020, Singapore became the first country to give regulatory approval for the world’s first “clean meat” that does not come from slaughtered animals.
According to a Barclays report, the market for meat alternatives could be worth $140 billion within the next decade.
In October, the Sydney-based company opened its first factory, which is expected to produce up to 30 tonnes of cell-based meat a year.
Its second factory is slated to be complete in the second half of 2024. It expects the second factory to be even larger than the first plant and will be able to produce 100 times the amount of cultured meat.
The lead investor in this round, Blackbird, announced early this month that it raised about $640 million for a new fund that will invest in general companies in Australia and New Zealand.
The venture investor, which counts Canva and robotics firm Zoox in its portfolio, said the fifth fund is Australia’s largest fund to date and doubles the size of the fourth fund that closed in August 2020.