IntegriCulture Inc. has completed a Series A round of JPY 800 Million (USD 7.4 Million) backed by Beyond Next Ventures, NH Foods, AgFunder and other investors. The cumulative amount raised stands about JPY 1.1 Billion (USD 10.2 Million).

■Series A investors
・Beyond Next Ventures
・NH Foods
・Real Tech Fund
・Agfunder
・Mr. Naruhisa Nakagawa ※Caygan Capital Ltd. CEO and CIO, investment as an individual investor
・Hiroshima Venture Capital
・VU Venture Partners
and other investors

■Use of fund
Research and development of cell culture technology, facilities and equipment, staffing and operational costs

■Latest development and future milestones
IntegriCulture Inc. launched 2 cellular agriculture infrastructure enterprise solutions packages under “Uni-CulNet®” scheme on 7th May, 2020. CulNet™ system units will be provided to clients by rent or sales basis to roll out the cellular agriculture infrastructure.
CulNet Pipeline: A enterprise solution to commercialize client’s cellular agriculture product
CulNet Consortium: The CulNet consortium welcomes domestic and global participants in 5 fields – cell source, culture medium, CulNet hardware, product bioreactor, and product processing to build cellular agriculture infrastructure.

Future milestones：
Food grade culture medium and cultured serum:
Launch of food grade culture medium “SpaceSalt” on summer 2020 on e-commerce platforms including crowdfunding
Launch of cosmetics product based on cultured serum on spring 2021, by direct-to-consumer model
Cell-based meat: Launch of cell-based foie gras on 2021, processed meat on 2023 and steak on 2025
Uni-CulNet: CulNet system technology is deployed to clients from May 2020 and will be updated every 2-3 years for larger scale and lower costs

Further milestones: Options such as cultured serum supplements, cell-cultured non-food products such as leather and fur, cultivated products for medical applications remain open.

■Use of funds raised
Functional compounds:
Anti-aging cosmetics product based on IntegriCulture’s unique ingredient (cultured serum) will be launched in April 2021 by D2C model. The funds will be used for R&D, production, marketing, branding and staffing.
Cultivated meat:
Cultivated foie gras production site will be built in 2020 to prepare for 2021 launch. The funds will be used for R&D, facilities and equipment, staffing
Uni-CulNet:
R&D, facilities and equipment, staffing, and operational costs of the CulNet Consortium

■Comments by Yuki Hanyu, CEO, IntegriCulture Inc.
The funds will be used to build accessible cellular agriculture to make 2021 the Year One of democratized cellular agriculture.

■Comments by stakeholders
Tsuyoshi Ito, CEO, Beyond Next Ventures
The environmental footprint and looming supply shortage of meat is a challenging issue in our food system. IntegriCulture Inc. offers a potential solution by developing one of the world’s least expensive and best quality cutivated meat. Their “CulNet system” technology can be applied to a broad range of cellular agriculture products of food and non-food categories. We support the growth of IntegriCulture Inc. to build a sustainable future.

Yukihiro Maru, President of Real Tech Holdings & Group CEO of Leave-a-Nest
I feel nostalgic about the times when the founders were prototyping at Leave-a-Nest Iidabashi HQ Biotechnology Lab in 2015. The team has grown since with support of TechPlanter and investment by Real Tech Fund. I am glad that the startup progress to the next stage with this funding round. In partnership with new domestic and overseas investors, we would like to solve the world’s challenges with IntegriCulture building cellular agriculture infrastructure.

Rob Leclerc, Founding Partner, AgFunder
I don’t think anyone else on the planet has given more thought to how to solve the problems of cultivated meat than Yuki. Bringing down the cost of cell culture media is the central challenge for all cultivated meat companies and IntegriCulture has the most elegant solution we’ve seen to solve this problem.

J. Skyler Fernandes, General Partner, VU Venture Partners
Integriculture’s technology makes the production of cultured meat affordable at scale, and will rapidly increase the commercialization for the next generation of meat brands.