Orbillion Bio’s plans to make high-end meats in a lab have investors lining up for a seat at the company’s cap table.
Mere weeks after launching from Y Combinator’s famous accelerator program, the Silicon Valley-based potential purveyor of premium lamb loins, elk steaks, bison burgers and more has managed to haul in $5 million in financing.
The company is led by Patricia Bubner, Gabriel Levesque-Tremblay and Samet Yildirim, who between them have more than 30 years working in bioprocessing and the biopharmaceuticals industry.
A little over a month ago, Orbillion held its first public tasting event, where meats mixed with its elk, beef and sheep were on offer straight from the petri dish to the table.
This Y Combinator startup is taking lab-grown meat upscale with elk, lamb and Wagyu beef cell lines
Investors in the $5 million round include: At One Ventures, which has also backed Finless Foods and Wild Earth; Metaplanet Holdings; the European investment firm k16 ventures; FoundersX Ventures, which also invested in SpaceX; Prithi Ventures, which backed Mission Barns and 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 endowment.
“We were immediately struck by Orbillion’s focus on high-end, flavorful, hard-to-find meats like lamb, elk, wagyu beef, and bison, their strong science, business, and engineering backgrounds, and the fact that they are so focused on flavor that they literally have a Master Butcher on their advisory board,” said Ali Rohde, GP at Outset Capital, an early-stage venture fund run by Rohde along with repeat entrepreneurs Kanjun Qiu and Josh Albrecht. “Lab-grown meat is the future, and Orbillion Bio is already paving the way.”
The company said it would use the cash to bring its first product, a Wagyu beef offering, to pilot production.
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