Yali Bio, a California-based FoodTech company, raised USD 3.9 million in seed funding led by Essential Capital, bringing its total funding to USD 5 million. Other investors included Third Kind Venture Capital, S2G Ventures, CRCM Ventures, FTW Ventures, and First-in Ventures, while Stephanie Sher and John Goldsmith participated as angel investors.

The funds will be used to expand its R&D, operations, and product and business development capacity to produce high-quality designer fats for plant-based meat and dairy products. 

Founded in 2021, Yali Bio focuses on tailormade fats for plant-based meat and dairy products to enhance the flavors of alternative meats. The startup uses synthetic biology, deep learning, and genomics methods to create designer fats, which it claims are environmentally sustainable yet similar in terms of texture and flavor to their animal-based counterparts. Yali Bio is developing patented technology that will allow them to create a pipeline of plant-based fats that are designed to mimic animal fats and can be adapted to several purposes. This makes it one of the first to use precision fermentation to tackle plant-based fats.