TOKYO, May 28, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- IntegriCulture Inc. has completed a Series A fundraising round of JPY800 million (USD7.4 million) backed by Beyond Next Ventures, NH Foods, AgFunder and other investors. The cumulative amount raised stands about JPY1.1 billion (USD10.2 million).
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Series A investors
Use of fund
Latest developments and future milestones
CulNet System units will be provided to clients by rent or on a sales basis to roll out the cellular agriculture infrastructure.
CulNet Pipeline: An enterprise solution to commercialize clients' cellular agriculture product
CulNet Consortium: The CulNet consortium welcomes domestic and global participants in five fields -- cell source, culture medium, CulNet hardware, product bioreactor, and product processing to build cellular agriculture infrastructure.
- Future milestones:
Food grade culture medium and cultured serum:
Launch of food grade culture medium "SpaceSalt" in summer 2020 on e-commerce platforms including crowdfunding
Launch of cosmetics product based on cultured serum in spring 2021, by direct-to-consumer model
Cell-based meat: Launch of cell-based foie gras in 2021, processed meat in 2023 and steak in 2025
Uni-CulNet: CulNet System technology is deployed to clients from May 2020 and will be updated every two to three years for larger scale and lower costs.
- Further milestones: Options such as cultured serum supplements, cell-cultured non-food products such as leather and fur, and cell-cultured products for medical applications remain open.
Use of funds raised
Comments by Yuki Hanyu, CEO, IntegriCulture Inc.
"The funds will be used to build accessible cellular agriculture to make 2021 the Year One of democratized cellular agriculture."
Comments by stakeholders
Rob Leclerc, Founding Partner, AgFunder
"I don't think anyone else on the planet has given more thought to how to solve the problems of cultivated meat than Yuki. Bringing down the cost of cell culture media is the central challenge for all cultivated meat companies and IntegriCulture has the most elegant solution we've seen to solve this problem."
J. Skyler Fernandes, General Partner, VU Venture Partners
"IntegriCulture's technology makes the production of cultured meat affordable at scale, and will rapidly increase the commercialization for the next generation of meat brands."
About IntegriCulture Inc.
The company's unique patented "CulNet System," a general-purpose large-scale cell culture system, is a biotechnology platform capable of producing animal cell-based food and materials such as meat, leather and other products. By culturing target cells with growth factor source cells in connected bioreactors, the "CulNet System" emulates natural animal body endocrine systems to produce cultured serum. The cultured serum then efficiently and inexpensively cultures target cells without relying on immortalization or externally added foetal bovine serum or growth factors. The system in theory can culture any given animal cells and offers a wide range of applications in food, medical, biochemical and materials products.
IntegriCulture will demonstrate businesses based on the CulNet System and offers the technology to global clients as cellular agriculture infrastructure. The company hopes this biotechnology platform will provide means to meet the U.N. SDGs in the food sector and to achieve democratization of cellular agriculture, in which citizens can produce cellular agriculture products of any categories including food, medical, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, chemicals and materials. Then IntegriCulture can build a sustainable civilization full of creative citizens and rich with their cultures on Earth and beyond.
Company overview
Company name: IntegriCulture Inc.
CEO: Yuki Hanyu
Founded: October 23, 2015
Address: TWIns 3F N101, Kawada-cho, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 162-8666, Japan
Business overview: Cell-cultured meat, food, cosmetics and functional compounds produced by "CulNet System (TM)," a general-purpose large-scale cell culture system
Website: https://integriculture.jp/?locale=en
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