Orbillion Bio’s plans to make high-end meat in a lab have investors lining up for a spot on the company’s cap table.
Just weeks after launching Y Combinator’s famous accelerator program, the Silicon Valley-based prospect of premium lamb fillets, elk steaks, bison burgers and more raised $ 5 million in funding.
The company is led by Patricia Bubner, Gabrial Levesque Tremblay and Samet Yidrim, who have been in the bioprocessing and biopharmaceutical industries for over 30 years.
A little over a month ago, Orbillion held its first public tasting, offering meat mixed with moose, beef, and sheep straight from the petri dish to the table.
Investors in the $ 5 million round include: At One Ventures, which also supported Finless Foods and Wild Earth; Metaplanet Holdings; the European investment firm k16 ventures; FoundersX Ventures, which also invest in SpaceX; Prithi Ventures, which supported Mission Barns, Turtle Tree Labs; and angel investors, including Jonghoon Lim, the CEO of Hanmi Pharmaceuticals; Kris Corzine; Ethan Perlstein, the CEO of Perlara, the first biotech PBC; and a well-known university foundation.
“We were immediately impressed with Orbillion’s focus on high quality, flavorful and hard-to-find meats like lamb, elk, Wagyu beef and bison, their strong scientific, business and technical background and the fact that they are so focused on taste that they literally have a master butcher on their advisory board, ”said Ali Rohde, GP at Outset Capital, an early-stage venture fund operated by Rohde together with repeat entrepreneurs Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht. “Laboratory-grown meat is the future, and Orbillion Bio is already paving the way.”
The company said it would use the money to bring its first product, a Wagyu beef offering, into pilot production.