Announcement
Series A and the Wild road ahead
We’re thrilled to announce that CRV has led Wildtype’s Series A financing. The $12.5 million round included participation from Maven Ventures and renewed support from our seed investors including Spark Capital and Root Ventures.
In particular, we’re excited to welcome George Zachary to Wildtype’s board of directors. In addition to his 20+ years of experience in venture, George is a former founder who shares our passion for creating the cleanest, most sustainable fish and meat on the planet.
Funding rounds have a way of punctuating the otherwise whirlwind pace of a young and growing company. Looking back over the past eighteen months, we are most proud of the community we’ve built along the way. Our full-time team today includes some of the world’s most talented food scientists, process engineers, biologists, and biomedical engineers.
Wildtype’s crew, September 2019
In addition, we are expanding our chef collaborator community, which now spans from Seattle to Portland to San Francisco to LA, and even Maui. These chefs and restaurant owners have generously invested their skills and expert palates to help us improve the quality of our early products. One of our core beliefs is that culinary input should not be confined to the ideas within Wildtype, but open to a wide community of collaborators. As such, we continue to welcome new chefs and food lovers into our extended family. Please say hello if you’d like to join us on our mission.
We were also excited to give the world its first taste of cultivated salmon. On June 2nd, we debuted an early version of our products at Maylin Chavez’ Olympia Oyster Bar in Portland, Oregon. Bloomberg’s Josh Petri attended the dinner and later published his reflections with Lydia Mulvany. The New York Times also prominently featured Wildtype salmon prepared by chef Rose Ha in San Francisco a few weeks later.
Wildtype salmon ceviche; photo credit: H. Watson
As we look to the path ahead, our first priority will remain on crafting delicious products that will have our customers coming back for seconds, thirds, and fourths. We will also scale our technology so we can reach more consumers, and drive down our production costs. Finally, we have some exciting work ahead as we decide where we will launch Wildtype’s products.
If the next two years are anything like the previous two, we know that we’re in for an exciting ride. Providing delicious, sustainable, and nutritious seafood has never been more important. Every day that passes, our oceans warm, the fish in them continue to dwindle, and we move one step closer to a world where our favorite dishes simply aren’t available. Wildtype’s mission is to play a small part in reversing these trends by creating delicious foods in a new way. Whether as a colleague, a chef, a customer, an investor, or a food lover, we hope that you will join us on the Wild road ahead.