Bill Gates And Robert Downey Jr Invest In Vegan Cheese Brand That Challenges The Dairy Industry

Food tech startup Nobell Foods has just raised $75M to reinvent plant-based cheeses and the whole cheese category. This company is challenging the way we talk about, think about, and eat cheese.  

Nobell makes delicious cheeses from plant-derived dairy proteins without any involvement of animals.

With its Series B closing of $75 million, Nobell emerges with over $100M in funding backed by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Robert Downey Jr.'s FootPrint Coalition Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz among other investors. Prior to this Series B round, Nobell raised over $25M since launching from seed money startup accelerator Y Combinator in 2017. 

Following its mission of creating a radically more humane and sustainable food system, Nobell plans to launch its cheeses to the public by the end of next year.

The company creates key dairy proteins, including casein, from high-quality soybeans. This process enables the brand to make cheeses that taste, smell, melt, stretch, and even age like those made from animal-based ingredients.

Nobell's patented approach to making dairy from plants is the result of more than four years of research and development, and the unrelenting desire of its founder Magi Richani to transform the food system and make cheeses that stretch, melt and taste as great as the ones from cow's milk. An engineer by training, Richani understood the crucial role that essential dairy proteins - caseins - play in giving cheese the qualities we love. Like all proteins, caseins have a unique genetic code. 

Richani Magi and her team at Nobell discovered how to recreate this genetic code in soybean seeds and grow plants that have the same dairy caseins found in animal milks. Today, Nobell can produce more caseins per acre more efficiently, sustainably, and cost effectively than cows. Using proprietary processes, Nobell extracts the caseins and uses them to make delicious cheese. 

Magi was inspired to launch Nobell when she learnt about the broader connections between the climate and our food system. She realised she wanted to use science as a solution to feed more people, end cruel factory farming processes and address climate change. Seeing cheese as the "last frontier" in animal-free foods - a food that so many people are attached to and are not willing to sacrifice - Magi wanted to create a plant-based cheese that would satisfy everyone and change perception of what a vegan plant-based cheese can be. 

Nobells' vegan cheese will be perfect on pizza, in vegan mac & cheese, and great for any cheese board just like the real thing, but without hurting any animals.