Recently, MycoTechnology, a company headquartered in Colorado, USA, announced the completion of an $80 million Series E financing. This round of financing was led by the Oman Investment Authority, an affiliate of the Oman Sovereign Wealth Fund. In addition, Tyson Foods and other agri-food giants also followed suit. cast this round.
The company, which uses fermentation technology and mushroom mycelium to create novel foods, said in a statement that the funding will be used to advance the development of its fermentation technology platform and prioritize the rollout of its products in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
As the company closed a $39 million Series D in 2020, the company's CEO, Alan Hahn, said it plans to go public in the second half of 2022. Alan Hahn is a serial entrepreneur who has founded several companies, including Scale Computing, which valued it at $100 million within 18 months. Alan Hahn has also successfully grown a startup from zero revenue to $200 million a year.
As the vegetative growth part of fungi, mycelium provides food for the growth of fungi to survive and reproduce. The fungi absorb water and minerals from the environment through the mycelium, and also absorb organic nutrients through extracellular digestion.
Since its inception in 2013, MycoTechnology has focused on using mycelium to solve a challenge facing the food and beverage industry, namely the sustainable production of protein. According to the official website, MycoTechnology uses a process called "liquid culture" or "submerged fermentation" to utilize mushroom mycelium.
First, in a small flask, a pure culture of a specific mushroom mycelium species is inoculated into a sterile proprietary medium. This initial fermentation is designed to initiate growth and induce the mycelium's digestion process to trigger specific enzymes. As the production process expands, fermentation takes place through several larger and larger tanks. At each stage, the mycelium chemically and physically adapts to the new environment while continuing to produce the appropriate enzymatic reactions.
As the mycelium feeds and grows, it produces a variety of useful compounds that become commercially viable, "naturally transformed" components. Once the main fermenter is mature, the mycelium and supernatant can be isolated, dried or extracted for specific compounds, and each ingredient is used as a food ingredient and solution.
MycoTechnology is known for producing ClearIQ? bitterness blocker and shiitake fermented protein FermentIQ?.
ClearIQ® Bitterness Blocker is made from mushroom mycelium and is "the world's first natural and organic general-purpose bitterness blocker", which can balance product bitterness, astringency, etc., thereby reducing the addition of sugar, which It works by blocking bitter taste receptors on the tongue, inhibiting the binding of bitter agents so that no bitter taste is felt. According to Alan Hahn, one company has reduced sugar content by more than 50% after using ClearIQ®.
Ferment IQ ? is a vegetable protein co-fermented by Myco Technology and Naturex. It is co-fermented with pea, rice and shiitake mycelium, which improves flavor, aroma, digestibility, etc. FermentIQ™ is free of the "Big Eight" allergens, but contains 9 essential amino acids and 11 non-essential amino acids, as well as vitamin B12.
To make FermentIQ®, MycoTechnology uses the mycelium of a unique shiitake species, which converts raw materials containing pea and rice protein into a PDCAAS score (an index for evaluating the quality of a protein digestibility-absorption corrected score, 1 is a perfect score) of 1.00 and Completely vegan protein with 77% dry weight protein. Available in powder form, it can be used in everything from plant-based milk and yogurt to baked goods, grains, and processed meats, as protein chips in products such as bars, or as a textured product in meats class alternatives.
In addition to this, MycoTechnology has several projects in the works. One of the highlights is Cordyceps sinensis, a medicinal fungus used in Chinese and Tibetan medicine with a variety of benefits including supporting the immune system.
However, Hahn has also said that MycoTechnology sells more than just products, claiming that the company can provide a corresponding platform, which has more than 60 different fungal organisms.
In fact, the use of fungal mycelium to produce vegan meat is very popular among investors. Just in February 2022, German startup Keen 4 Greens announced the completion of a €1.8 million seed round to expand production facilities and develop new product lines, including chicken strips, breaded chicken strips, beef and bacon.
U.S.-based MyForest Foods also uses mycelium to make its bacon analog. Go to 2021 Robert Downey Ventures. The funds raised were used to produce the largest mycelium production facility in the U.S., which at full commercial capacity is expected to produce 3 million pounds of bacon per year, with perhaps more to come after 2023.
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