Revo Foods Catches €1.5M In First Fundraise To Fuel 3D Printed Plant-Based Seafood Launch

Revo Foods, the Vienna-based startup behind 3D printed plant-based salmon, has raised €1.5 million (~US$1.78 million) in its first investment round. The fresh capital will enable the startup to double down on R&D and speed up the market launch of its 3D printed vegan seafood products. 

Revo Foods, formerly known as Legendary Vish, has closed its first financing round with over €1.5 million (~US$1.78 million). The round saw participation from Danish venture capital firm Hazelpond Capital, Hamburg-based sports and nutrition investors friends2grow, MKO Holdings, cultured fat startup Peace of Meat co-founder Eva Sommer and angel investor Jens Schumann. 

Austrian government-backed funds also supported the plant-based seafood food tech in the fundraise, with both the FFG Austrian Research Promotion Agency and the Vienna Business Agency joining the investment. 

We are happy to announce the closure of our first fundraising round…and are enthusiastic to work with fantastic strategic investors that will really accelerate our 3D printed plant-based seafood market entry.

Revo Foods

“We are happy to announce the closure of our first fundraising round…and are enthusiastic to work with fantastic strategic investors that will really accelerate our 3D printed plant-based seafood market entry,” announced Revo Foods in a post. 

“Happy to work with such a great group of strategic investors from the food tech, food distribution and software [and] engineering field,” added Revo Foods’ CEO Robin Simsa, who co-founded the startup with Theresa Rothenbücher and Hakan Gürbüz in 2017. 

Simsa separately told Green Queen Media that the funds will also be used to develop its industrial 3D food printing machine. Up until this first fundraise, the then-bootstrapped startup had been operating via a number government grants.

“After this fundraising round, we can fully focus on product and tech development and are excited to present new products soon,” Simsa told us.

The founding trio came together under the European Union-backed research project Training4CRM, and began exploring whether 3D printing technology could be applied to develop alternatives for seafood that could mimic the complex structure of cuts of fish, such as tuna and salmon, using only plant-based ingredients. 

While there are a host of startups now working on plant-based seafood, Revo Foods and its 3D printing technology stands out from other alternatives on the market with its whole-cut format, as opposed to seafood analogues made using extrusion processing techniques, like Good Catch Foods’ vegan range of tuna chunks, fish burgers and crab cakes, or Hooked Foods’ shredded salmon. 

Revo Foods’ initial products – salmon strips and salmon spreads – won’t have the same whole-cut resemblance to seafood, but prototypes of salmon and tuna sashimi, which are still under development, will have the complex bite and structure of real fish. 

The startup recently hosted its first 3D printed plant-based salmon tasting event in Austria in February, partnering with bagel café Budapest Bagels to serve bagels featuring its high-protein vegan salmon that is made from just 11 ingredients and contains plant-based omega-3 fatty acids.

Revo Foods says it plans to launch its initial plant-based seafood products on the market in Vienna this summer, before rolling out to other European markets later on and continuing its development of whole-cut structure fillets – which the latest funding will be crucial to help speed up. Simsa told Green Queen Media that the first international market it will debut after its domestic Austria launch will be Germany.

The startup stands among just a handful of food techs using 3D printing to create alternative proteins, alongside players like Barcelona-based Novameat who has developed 3D printed vegan steak and cell-based meat prototype, and Israeli firm Redefine Meat who has developed a hyper-realistic plant-based 3D “Alt-Steak”.

All images courtesy of Revo Foods.