Zurich, 8 March 2022 – Blue Horizon, a pure play impact investor in the future of food, today announces its seed investment into a sustainable ingredients company producing protein from carbon dioxide.
Arkeon Biotechnologies is an ingredients company based in Vienna, Austria, leveraging the power of ancient microbes to create the most sustainable, nutritious, and ethical food system possible. Arkeon’s proprietary technology allows the company to convert CO2 directly into all 20 amino acids that are essential for the human diet, enabling an entirely new world of food products.
The company’s technological foundations have been built over a decade of research by co-founders Dr. Simon Rittmann, Dr. Guenther Bochmann, and Dr. Gregor Tegl. The team’s technical breakthrough was in the identification of an exceptional, understudied extremophile microorganism from the Archaea domain that naturally produces the building blocks of proteins in only one fermentation process.
The scientists are now focused on scaling up the production of amino acids and functional peptides to bring a variety of high-value ingredients to customers. The company’s customizable products are 100% vegan and GMO-free, they can be used as clean label ingredients for plant-based foods, nutrition products, cultivated meat culture media, and much more.
Blue Horizon has several investments in precision fermentation companies, including Motif FoodWorks, Geltor, Impossible Foods, The Every Company, AgBiome, and Chromologics. Other investors in Arkeon Biotechnologies’ EUR 7 million seed round include EVIG, Synthesis Capital, and ReGen Ventures.
Friederike Grosse-Holz, Director at Blue Horizon, said: “Arkeon has the potential for tremendous impact for people, animals, and the planet. We see them as an emerging industry leader in gas fermentation, a “holy grail” technology in Climate Tech. When Arkeon industrializes its groundbreaking science, it will not only provide low-cost functional inputs for the New Sustainable Food System, but can sequester carbon dioxide itself while preserving natural carbon sinks. The technology not only could reduce agricultural land use and make re-wilding Earth possible, but is also a strong candidate for off-planet protein production systems in the future.”
Blue Horizon announces seed investment in Arkeon Biotechnologies (PDF)
Blue Horizon investiert in Firma, die Proteine aus Kohlendioxid herstellt (PDF)