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The Perfect
Protein Prize

The single biggest driver of extinction is what's on our plates. Animal agriculture is the number one cause of biodiversity loss, and demand is set to grow 70% by 2050. Asking the world to eat less meat hasn't worked. So we're funding the thing that will: proteins without the animal, built right.
Become a Partner

Why meat is a sustainability issue:

Farmed animal products use 83% of agricultural land but provide only 37% of protein — at least eight times less efficient than plants — and produce 3.3 times more greenhouse gas emissions per gram of protein.
90% of Amazon deforestation has resulted in cattle pasture and crops for animal feed—cattle offer a unique economic asset for land speculators.  
With populations and incomes rising globally, demand for animal-sourced foods is expected to grow by about 70% by 2050, resulting in increased conversion of habitat, including lands equating to 25% of Ecuador’s and Brazil’s protected areas.

The Solution:

The best solution is smart alternative proteins: foods that taste like meat but are made sustainably through biomanufacturing using plants, microbes, fungi, or animal cells — providing the type of market disruption for food that solar panels did for energy.

Today’s alternative proteins struggle to compete with animal products because they are not made using fit-for-purpose ingredients. Instead, alternative protein products are made using ingredients developed for animal feed or traditional vegetarian uses—they lack the flavor, functional, and nutritional properties needed to make products that taste like meat. Alternative protein companies spend up to 40% of ingredient costs masking plant flavors in their products.

Making consumer products this way is like trying to build an electric car using the parts of a combustion engine.
Become a Partner

Why a competion?

The Perfect Protein Prize will invite competitors from around the world to bring their best solutions to the table. Competitions work because they do two things at once: they widen the pool of people allowed to try, and they de-risk the attempt for anyone who does. They also de-risk the endeavor for funders — only the solutions that are proven to work receive funding. This open innovation approach has worked over and over again, in fields ranging from autonomous vehicles to vaccine development.

We are currently in the development and fundraising stage for the Perfect Protein Prize. Once the pieces are in place, we'll launch the competition. We'd love to hear from you if you are:

  • A funder who backs leapfrog bets in food and agriculture and has noticed that incremental grants to incumbent players haven't moved the needle.
  • A company that buys protein at scale and knows the market is ready for disruption.
  • A scientist or technologist who could judge this well — fermentation, cell culture, food science, agricultural economics, nutrition, or the parts of this we haven't yet thought to name.
  • An investor looking for follow-on deal flow the usual channels don't surface.
  • Someone who has big ideas we haven't thought of yet.

Let's rewrite the future of food.

Please get in touch, and a member of our team will get in touch about next steps.
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