SAN DIEGO — Through a $30 million Series B funding round, co-led by Piva Capital and Siddhi Capital, food technology company Plantible Foods is expanding its manufacturing operations at its 100-acre West Texas facility. New investors included Betagro Ventures; Cultivate Next, the venture arm of Chipotle Mexican Grill; Nourish Ventures, the venture arm of Griffith Foods; and existing investor Astanor Ventures, according to the company.

Founded in 2018 by Tony Martens Fekini and Maurits van de Ven, the food tech startup is developing a vertically integrated agricultural manufacturing platform to produce its Rubi Protein from lemna, or duckweed.

In 2023, the company added Rubi Whisk to its portfolio. Rubi Whisk is a functional ingredient for commercial producers of bread, donuts, cookies, cakes, pastries and pastas to replace eggs.

For the Rubi Whisk ingredient, the company extracts RuBiscCo from the lemna plant. The company then develops the Rubi protein RuBisCo into a powder. The company said the ingredient’s properties may mimic and replace animal proteins.

Plantible also produces Rubi Prime, a meat alternative ingredient powered by the company’s Rubi Protein. Rubi Prime may allow meat alternative product developers to receive the binding and emulsification benefits of methylcellulose, but with thermoirreversible binding so end products function served hot or cold, according to the company.

ICL Food Specialties and Plantible also partnered together in October 2023 to launch Rovitaris, a binding solution powered by the rubi protein RuBisCo.

Plantible also raised $21.5 million in a Series A round, led by Astanor Ventures with participation from Piva Capital, CJ CheilJedang and Good Friends, in September 2021 to scale its first commercial facility and to launch and commercialize its product in 2022.  

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