January 29, 2024

By Lynda Kiernan-Stone, Global AgInvesting Media

Less than a year after food tech company Elo Life Systems (Elo) closed on a $24.5 million Series A, the company announced it has now closed on an oversubscribed $20.5 million A2 round led by DCVC Bio and Novo Holdings, bringing total capital raised to-date to $45 million. 

Other participants in this latest round included Hanwha Next Generation Opportunity Fund, AccelR8, and Alexandria Venture Investments.

Elo was spun out of biotech company Precision BioSciences in late 2021 with a goal to reimagine the future of food. By leveraging bioengineering to modify the genes of a plant, Elo Life Systems is able to produce sought-after ingredients that are difficult to gain from natural sources and cannot be synthesized through artificial or other techniques. 

Realizing that new tools and systems are needed if we’re going to solve today’s greatest challenges facing our food system, Elo uses easy-to-grow crops as individual biofactories for these ingredients – an approach that enables local, commercial-scale production while reducing associated costs and environmental footprint.

“At Elo, we’re on a mission to unlock nature’s abilities to make consumers’ favorite foods more delicious, healthy and planet friendly,” said Todd Rands, CEO, Elo. “With strong support from our investors, we’re well positioned to scale up our production and stay on track to launch our first product in 2026.”

The company’s first molecular farming project is focused on the “holy grail” of sweeteners – a natural, monk-fruit-derived sweetener that is 300 times sweeter than sugar, but with no calories. Expected to launch in 2026, Elo explained that this ingredient can be used in thousands of food and beverage products to reduce sugar and artificial sweetener content while enhancing nutrition. 

In addition to this first product, Elo is also exploring the production of other ingredients such as novel proteins, natural preservatives, bio-actives, and high-value flavors. 

“Elo’s sweetener will be a major catalyst in the effort to lower sugar in our diets, improving human health and reducing the societal burden associated with chronic diseases,” said Kiersten Stead, managing partner, DCVC Bio. “Meanwhile, their efforts to protect and improve the productivity of staple crops like the banana will have a meaningful impact on the food billions of people rely upon every day.”

With the capital from this round, the company stated that it will scale and commercialize its sweetener product, expand its molecular farming pipeline of healthy and sustainable ingredients, and intensify its crop protection and productivity efforts, including its work to save the Cavendish banana from extinction.

Fusarium TR4 – a soil-borne, pathogenic fungus that is decimating banana plantations on a global scale, was first identified in the 1990s in Taiwan. And after years of battling the fungus across the Eastern Hemisphere, it has since made its way into the Americas, when it was discovered along the coastal region of Colombia in 2019 – prompting a national state of emergency, amid fears that it will spread across South America. 

Stepping up to save the $25 billion banana industry, Elo is currently in an ongoing partnership with Dole. Through this collaboration, Elo will assume the responsibility of the discovery, evaluation, and development of multiple approaches for combating and achieving resistance to Fusarium wilt; while Dole will conduct field evaluations, and will oversee the commercialization of the resulting Cavendish varieties that are resistant to Fusarium TR4. So far Elo’s banana has proven successful in greenhouse testing, and is currently undergoing field trials in Latin America. 

“Molecular farming will allow our food system to meet the needs of the world’s growing population while reducing the resources needed to produce nutritious food,” said Stephen Van Helden, principal in the Bioindustrial Investments group, Novo Holdings US. 

“Elo’s approach – together with cutting-edge science and an experienced management team – is aligned with Novo Holdings’ purpose to deliver scaled solutions for better societal and planetary outcomes.”

~ Lynda Kiernan-Stone is editor in chief with GAI Media, and is managing editor and daily contributor for Global AgInvesting’s AgInvesting Weekly News and  Agtech Intel News, as well as HighQuest Group’s Unconventional Ag. She can be reached at lkiernan-stone@globalaginvesting.com.

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