TurtleTree raised $30M in first round of funding
The Singapore-based company sets eyes on new R&D facility in Sacramento
TurtleTree — the first international start-up company to base itself at Woodland’s Lab@AgStart — recently announced that it raised $30 million in the first round of its series A funding.
“We are incredibly touched by the degree of faith all our investors have placed in TurtleTree and our unique vision of food,” TurtleTree CEO Fengru Lin said. “The series A funds will allow us to scale up our processes and come a huge step closer to creating a new era of sustainable nutrition.”
The Singapore-based company has been working on redefining how milk is produced by utilizing similar scientific strategies used by cell-meat companies to create cell-based human milk.
“The funding received has truly opened up a new world of possibility,” Max Rye, chief strategy officer for Turtle Tree, emphasized. “We can now set our sights on turning ambitions to reality starting with our U.S.based expansion plans and then moving on to the development and manufacturing of our first consumer ready products.”
TurtleTree chose Woodland’s Lab@AgStart to be its United States base because of the lab spaces it provided, its proximity to UC Davis and the city’s commitment to the food and agriculture industries.
However, the fast-growing company is already outgrowing its space and has started looking at larger facilities to house its research and development operations.
“We’re going to open an R&D facility in Sacramento that is 24,000 square feet and still need to fill labs and offices and manufacturing facilities within that location,” Rita Huang, communications lead for TurtleTree, said. “The funding will be very vital for setting up the facility so that we can produce our products and scale up into commercial production scale.”
While Woodland’s facility has allowed the business to continue its research, this move will be pivotal for the company to be able to continue growing.
“Lab@AgStart is an incubator space and we only have two benches,” Huang explained. “That is good for a transition period but as we move on, we need to scale up our production.”
Whether or not TurtleTree will continue its operations in Woodland once it has fully built out its operations at its Sacramento facility is still up for discussion, according to Huang.
Funds made from the first round of funding will be used to continue expanding the company’s portfolio of sustainable, better-foryou food items, according to Huang. Some funds will be set aside for technology development and talent acquisition.
TurtleTree hopes to expand into a global biotechnology platform with a vision for transforming performance nutrition, food systems and cellular agriculture, according to Huang.
“This will ultimately bring scaleable solutions to the cell-based food industry, ensuring people everywhere will have access to the nourishing nutrients of mammalian milk in a uniquely sustainable and affordable way,” Huang emphasized.