Impossible Foods raises $75M to race its plant burger into grocery stores

Impossible Foods makes plant-based meat engineered to replace animal products: its burger uses soy leghemoglobin, a plant protein carrying heme — the iron molecule that gives meat its taste — and sells first to restaurants, with grocery as the next battlefield.

That meat-eaters would switch if a plant burger truly tasted like beef — and Impossible could scale from restaurants to grocery before Beyond Meat owned the aisle.

Patrick Brown founded the Redwood City, California company around 2011 — TechCrunch called it six years old in August 2017 — to replace animal products with goods engineered from plants. Its first product was a burger built on soy leghemoglobin, and across earlier rounds its backers included Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures, Horizon Ventures, GV, Viking Global Investors and UBS.

By 2017 the burger was available only in select restaurants, and in May the company opened a factory in Oakland where it expected to produce 1 million pounds of ground plant meat per month. Late in July it quietly announced a $75 million round led by Temasek, with Open Philanthropy and earlier investors Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and Horizon Ventures participating; TechCrunch reported it on 2017-08-01, putting total funding at nearly $300 million. The money was for the race into grocery, where Beyond Meat was already in hundreds of Whole Foods and Safeway locations and launching into more than 600 Kroger stores across 13 states.

Taste is the switch: heme in soy leghemoglobin makes the burger cook and taste like beef, so the pitch targets meat-eaters, not just vegetarians.

The mission demanded industrial scale: a factory targeting 1 million pounds a month shows Impossible believed plant meat had to be made like real food, cheap and in volume, to matter.

The round bought time in a visible race: Beyond Meat already sat in hundreds of stores and was launching into 600 Kroger locations, so grocery first-mover advantage was the threat the $75M answered.

The science attracted deep pockets: Temasek led with Open Philanthropy and early backers Gates, Khosla and Horizon; GV, Viking and UBS had already invested, bringing total funding to nearly $300M.

A mission product still has to win on taste and distribution: Impossible engineered heme to beat meat on flavor, then raised $75M to outrun Beyond Meat into grocery before rivals owned the aisle.

As of 2017-08-01 Impossible Foods had raised the $75M round to nearly $300 million in total funding and was scaling production at its Oakland factory toward 1 million pounds of ground plant meat per month. Its burgers were still available only in select restaurants, with grocery next; the company was not providing further financial details, and CEO Patrick Brown was publicly arguing that investors should do deeper diligence on the science behind deals.