July 25, 2016

New Wave Foods announced it has opened a seed round anchored by investments made by early stage investor, Efficient Capital, and venture capital firm, New Crop Capital.

Founded in 2015 by Dominique Barnes, New Wave Foods uses red algae and other plant-based ingredients to develop lab-created shrimp and fish. The company’s first product, Shr!mp, a breaded popcorn shrimp alternative which is vegetarian, vegan, and certified as kosher, has even gained some high-profile traction, being ordered by Google to be served in the company’s cafeterias this past March.

Mitigating the pitfalls of fishing

The shrimp alternative not only mitigates the environmental effects of over-fishing, it also provides an answer to a widespread problem plaguing the global shrimp industry – slavery. An investigation by the AP found pervasive human trafficking and slavery within Thailand’s $7 billion seafood industry that serves the U.S., European and Asian markets.

“Americans love shrimp because of its low price and conduciveness to being heavily breaded and fried,” Emily Balsamo, a research analyst at Euromonitor International told The Atlantic. “Most consumers are not aware of the [slavery] issue and continue to consume shrimp.”

Market potential

“The market for meat analogs is expected to surpass $5 billion by 2020, and savvy investors are increasingly taking notice,” said New Wave in a company statement.

Earlier this year, New Crop Capital, launched its $25 million New Crop Capital (NCC) fund focuses solely on investing in plant based and culture based meat and dairy alternatives and the technology platforms that are designed to advance such products.

The category is also gaining backing from high-profile names including Microsoft founder, Bill Gates who participated along with UBS, Viking Global Investors, Khosla Ventures, and Horizon Ventures in a $108 million Series B for California-based Impossible Foods last October.

Launched only four years ago by Patrick Brown, who served 25 years as a professor of biochemistry at Stanford, and who was a co-founder of Kite Hill, a nut milk and cheese product company, Impossible Foods is developing a line of ‘next generation’ meat and cheese products made solely from plants, that contain no cholesterol, hormones, or antibiotics. The company’s flagship product is a plant-based, meatless cheeseburger that ‘bleeds its own blood’, through the use of ‘heme’ – a molecule found in certain plants and is also found in hemoglobin.

Perfecting the product

This latest round for New Wave follows previous investments in the company made by SOS Ventures through the accelerator group, IndieBio, which provides startups with lab space and mentorship to help bring products from concept to commercialization.

Getting its product to the point where it can hold its own against raw shrimp dishes, without being breaded is a major goal of the company moving forward. “Our ultimate goal is to get to the cocktail shrimp level,” Barnes told Tech Insider.

“It is your goal as a company to make this as easy as possible by making the product as close as possible to what people are used to eating, including the change of color of the food when it’s cooked,” Florian Radke, marketing specialist with New Wave Foods told IFLScience.

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Lynda Kiernan