Dutch startup Farmless raises €1.2 million to turn renewable energy and CO2 into carbon-negative food ingredients

Farmless, a Dutch startup, is using fermentation to produce carbon-negative, functional proteins with a complete amino acid profile. This technology, which will decouple food production from agricultural land, is backed by a €1.2 million pre-seed round led by Revent, Nucleus Capital, and Possible Ventures.

Instead of using sugar, Farmless is pushing the fermentation frontier using a liquid feedstock that can be made with renewable energy. This makes Farmless’ process dramatically more resource- and land-efficient than animal farming, requiring 10 to 25 times less land than plant protein and 250 to 500 times less than animal protein.

The €1.2 million pre-seed round also had participation from HackCapital, Sustainable Food Ventures, VOYAGERS Climate-Tech Fund, TET Ventures and angels Jenny Saft through the Atomico Angel program, Ron Shigeta, Martin Weber, Rick Bernstein, Nadine Geiser, Joy Faucher, Michele Tarawneh, Alexander Hoffmann and Christian Stiebner.

"We're excited by the Farmless approach to fermentation," commented Lauren Lentz from Revent. "We're specifically interested in food technologies with high scalability and the potential to rapidly outperform on the cost per kg of protein. Across both of these dimensions Farmless shows great potential and it's a delight to work with this remarkable team."

"We’re proud to be backed by an amazing group of experienced climate tech investors who share our mission. With our fermentation platform we aim to dramatically outperform animal agriculture and reliably produce low-cost proteins at a planetary scale. We believe this technology has the potential to end factory farming, rewild our planet and draw down gigatons of carbon," added Adnan Oner, the Founder & CEO of Farmless.

Farmless' initial products are designed to replace animal proteins, as the majority of agricultural land is currently used to feed animals. The Farmless fermentation platform can potentially create a whole new food repertoire, producing proteins, carbohydrates, beneficial fats, vitamins, and minerals from the bottom up.