Food-tech company Plantible Foods plans to reach profitability, expand manufacturing capacity and capitalize on market demand as part of its 2025 strategic objectives, boosted by a recent round of Series B funding, said company Co-founder Tony Martens Fekini.
Founded in 2016, Plantible cultivates duckweed — an aquatic lentil — to produce its Rovitaris Binding Solution made with Rubi Protein, a plant-based alternative to the widely used binding and gelling ingredient methylcellulose that provides many plant-based meats their bite and chew.
In November 2024, Plantible raised $30 million in a Series B round, co-led by Piva Capital and Siddhi Capital with participation from Astanor Ventures, Betagro Ventures, Cultivate Next and Nourish Ventures.
Additionally, functional ingredient supplier ICL re-invested in the company and previously helped Plantible commercially launch its ingredient in late 2023.
Plantible now is focusing on “hardcore execution” in 2025 and plans to expand its 100-acre Texas facility with the influx of capital, said Martens. This will help the food-tech company deliver on several multi-million-dollar agreements with large food and beverage companies and increasing its revenue tenfold, the company shared.
“We are at a stage where we need to ramp up production, and in order to ramp up production, we need to expand manufacturing capacity. The series B is really there to function as growth capital and to really start ramping on production, and thereby, obviously, revenue generation,” Martens said.
Food-tech funding in 2025: ‘We have not seen successful exits in the food-tech space’
While Plantible successfully raised funds, food-tech companies are heading into another challenging funding year as venture capitalists are turning to companies that offer “lower risk and provide good returns,’ Martens noted.
Venture capital deals in the food-tech space continued to decline in 2024 with 1,089 deals made between Q4 2023 and Q3 2024, a 34.4% decline from the previous year, according to data from PitchBook.
“We have not seen successful exits in the food-tech space, and so there is no guarantee for investors in the food-tech space that they are going to get their money out ─ that is still a huge risk,” he elaborated.
With limited funding available, food-tech companies will need to conserve capital and build manufacturing plants in an agile and modular way to stay in business, Martens explained.
Cultivated meat company UPSIDE Foods halted plans to open a factory in early 2024 to focus on expanding its existing facility, which the company noted would be cheaper. Later in the year, food-tech company SCiFi Foods closed its doors citing the “funding environment” as one reason for the decision in a LinkedIn post.
“If you have a manufacturing technology that is highly modular, you do not have to make huge capital investments up front in order to validate the scalability,” said Marten. ”If you jump from pilot to a commercial facility, $100 million is a big jump. But if you can make it in $10 million chunks, for example, it is more digestible,” he added.
Price parity or novelty? Why food-tech might want to focus on the latter
The conventional food-tech wisdom is with scale and production efficiency that price parity will be unlocked, boosting the adoption of alternative proteins and other ingredients. Martens pushed back on this idea being the only reason consumers buy a product, noting how successful food companies were able to provide unique taste experiences and functional attributes.
“Olipop is not the cheapest soda out there. It is not cheap soda, but people are more than happy to pay double the price of a Diet Coke because they see some functional benefit in drinking Olipop. We need to take a step back and say, ’What is the benefit that the consumer is going to get when they consume these products?’ Either they are going to have an amazing flavor or textural experience, or there are some health benefits,” Marten elaborated.
Companies like Vow are developing novel foods, such as its mammoth meatball, which can bring consumer excitement to the food-tech space industry, he explained.
“People cannot buy mammoth meatballs at the moment in the grocery store. It is a new product, a new category, and if it is tasty, it is exciting for consumers to eat. Whereas if there is lab-grown chicken and there is regular chicken, you are starting to compete with something that people consume over and over again,” Marten added.
