Creating non-dairy cheese with data science? This Bay Area founder says it’s the future
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As a teenager in Munich, Oliver Zahn made the difficult choice to go vegetarian after learning about the horrors of animal agriculture. But the way he sees it, others won’t simply do the same.
That is, he says, unless the alternatives are nearly identical in flavor, texture, aroma and, crucially, price. Those are the selling points of Climax Foods, his Berkeley-based startup that has raised around $26 million to market plant-based substitutes for foods that are among the most difficult to mimic, such as aged cheeses.
The former head of data science at Google and lead data scientist at Impossible Foods said his expertise gives his startup an edge over other plant-based creations. It was a leap of faith for the founder, who wasn’t sure if he could run his own business until he realized his home kitchen lab creations could have real potential on the market.
“What does an animal do?” Zahn said. “Fundamentally, a cow just eats a bunch of plants and converts them into milk and meat. I was thinking, is there another way to achieve that, to make foods directly from plants? It didn’t strike me as some weird Franken-food—humans have always tinkered with what they eat.”
Here’s how it works: The company collects reams of data from rare plants found all over the world and feeds the information to machine-learning models that predict exactly how the foods would hold up against the real thing.
Then, the company’s labs in Berkeley, California, synthesize the foods that Zahn said have been mesmerizing early testers. The initial lineup is comprised entirely of cheeses: brie, blue, feta and chévre.
Zahn’s long-term vision is to bring the foods to market at prices that compete with real meat and dairy products. And after raising enough capital to scale its business model,…
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