San Leandro, CA—Having proven its ability to produce animal-free casein and animalfree Mozzarella, New Culture has closed its Series A funding round, enabling the company to make the transition to a commercial entity by making key hires and scaling up production capacity.

The $25 million, oversubscribed round was led by Ahren Innovation Capital and CPT Capital. New investors include ADM Ventures, Be8 Ventures, S2G Venture and Future Ventures. Existing investors participating in the round are Evolv Ventures (the corporate venture arm of Kraft Heinz), SOSV’s IndieBio, Bee Partners, Mayfield, Alumni Ventures Group, and Bluestein Ventures.

New Culture said its cheese will first be available in select dining experiences in 2022, starting with Mozzarella in pizzerias.

“We’re thrilled to close our Series A with an incredible syndicate of existing and new inventors,” said New Culture’s co-founders, Matt Gibson and Inja Radman. “The progress we have made with our science and our cheese is a testament to the world-class team we have been fortunate enough to build and work alongside. We can’t wait to dive into this next phase of scale up and production to offer our delicious, melty, animal-free cheese to pizza lovers all across the country.”

“We’ve been impressed by the progress the team at New Culture has made in applying innovative science-based approaches to making high quality animal-free cheese,” said Alice Newcombe- Ellis, founding and general partner of Ahren Innovation Capital.

“What New Culture has accomplished in a short period of time through their several pizza tastings reinforces their market-leading position in developing animalfree casein,” said Steve Sanger, general partner at Evolv Ventures and New Culture board member. “Their focus on using that casein to produce animal-free cheese will allow consumers to enjoy everything they love about cheese (taste, melt, stretch, browning) without having to compromise, all while helping to make the world more sustainable.”