For Its Sustainable Butter, Savor is Ditching Cows for CO2 – and You Can Eat It This Year

Californian food tech startup Savor has launched its farm-free, carbon-based butter, which will appear on Michelin-starred menus this year, ahead of a Series B funding round.

“Life on Earth is carbon-based, meaning both we and the food we eat are made of carbon,” says Kathleen Alexander, one of Inc. Magazine’s 2025 Female Founders 500.

She is the co-founder and CEO of Savor, the Californian firm that made headlines last year with a butter made from carbon dioxide. The alternative fat has impressed figures like Bill Gates, a lead investor in the startup’s seed round in 2022, and in the coming months, it hopes to give diners across the US a taste of the future.

On its three-year anniversary, Savor has officially launched its animal- and plant-free butter, hosting special dinners in New York City and San Francisco to make the occasion. The fat ingredient – self-determined as safe to sell in the US – is molecularly constructed via a thermochemical process involving point-captured carbon dioxide, green hydrogen, and methane.

A host of establishments in California will introduce menu items featuring Savor butter soon, including Michelin-starred eateries SingleThread and ONE65, and beloved establishment Jane the Bakery. While the firm did not reveal the exact timing for each launch, or how the butter will be used, it confirmed that recipes will be rolled out throughout 2025.

How Savor makes its agriculture-free butter

“We use carbon in its simplest forms – gases like carbon dioxide or methane,” says Alexander, who established Savor with Ian McKay in 2022. “These gases are transformed into carbon chains called alkanes, which are then turned into fatty acids (the building blocks of fats and oils) and eventually into fats. This process is achieved through a controlled combination of temperature and pressure.”

Savor’s raw ingredients are food-grade alkanes, which are themselves made from multiple primordial elements, like hydrogen and oxygen from water and carbon from gases like CO2 or methane.

“The fatty acids are then purified and assembled to produce high-quality short-, medium- and long-chain triglycerides (SMLCT) to replace conventional fats in a variety of food applications – meaning that we can make substitutes for any existing fats and oils. Where fluid oils are typically shorter-chain triglycerides and harder fats have more long-chain ones: we have a blueprint to make any of them,” she explains.

“By starting directly with carbon gases, we bypass the lengthy (but equally magical) process of carbon being captured by plants, for animals to eat those plants and for humans to harvest, transform and refine these fats. All of this uses huge amounts of land, with an extensive supply chain and releases more gaseous carbon in the process.”

Alexander says Savor’s fats are “chemically identical” to those we already eat, just in varying concentrations. The butter is its first commercial product. “The main ingredient is MLCT oil (medium- and long-chain triglycerides), which is 100% fat, and Savor’s dairy fat formulation,” she reveals. “Other ingredients are water, less than 2% of sea salt, sunflower lecithin, natural flavour and beta carotene (colour).”

Savor butter: a like-for-like replacement

Savor intends its fats to be used in ingredients just like conventional fats. “The finished products that use our fats as ingredients are indistinguishable from products that use animal or plant-based fats,” says Alexander.

“This is true whether our products replace existing fats, or are customised to meet a specific purpose, or if they are integrated into more complex products like butter,” adds Chiara Cecchini, VP of commercialisation at Savor. “Our butter formulation has properties that are amazingly close to dairy butter. It can ‘croissant’ and can be a 1:1 replacement in most baking applications.”

The vegan-friendly butter aims to tackle several fat pain points. Animal fats are revered for their flavour and functionality, but they’re terrible for the environment. Livestock farming may just be the leading cause of climate change, and take up vast amounts of land and water resources.

Plant-based fats are essential to the food system too, with saturated fats like palm and coconut oil providing form and functionality to legions of products. Palm oil alone is present in half of all supermarket items and is responsible for most of the deforestation in tropical regions.

According to Savor’s calculations, the production of animal and plant-based fats collectively generates 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That share will only increase as demand for these ingredients balloons. Compared to unsalted butter with 80% fat, Savor generates 67% fewer emissions per calorie.

For Savor to capture consumers’ wallets, the product needs to capture their palates. Does the taste match up? “Practically everyone who has tried our butter – including home cooks, consumers, chefs, and potential CPG partners – have remarked that from a sensory and performance standpoint, it is extremely close to conventional butter,” says Cecchini. “It also outperforms plant-based alternatives in taste and functionality.”

Savor in talks with CPG companies and pursuing FDA letter

It’s not just restaurants that Savor’s butter has managed to attract. “A number of CPG companies’ R&D teams are working on ingredient innovation projects that can leverage Savor’s unique ability to create customisable fats and oils and are excited about the potential,” says Cecchini.

The firm is negotiating joint development agreements with some of these companies now. “They have been particularly impressed by the versatility and tunability of fatty acid profiles that Savor’s platform can produce – capabilities that extend well beyond the company’s initial dairy-fat-mimicking formulation,” she adds.

In preparation for its commercial launch, Savor has expanded its R&D capabilities at its San Jose headquarters and opened a 25,000 sq ft pilot facility in Batavia, Illinois, which can produce several metric tonnes of fat.

The startup also self-affirmed its butter as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) last year – though with Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr calling this rule a “loophole” that needs closing, many firms are actively looking to notify the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to obtain its approval.

Savor is among them, having been in contact with the food safety agency for over a year. “We consulted with the FDA throughout the work on our GRAS determination and plan to submit our GRAS dossier and work toward a ‘no questions’ letter,” says Alexander.

“I’ve tasted Savor’s products, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter.” This was the consensus of Gates, who led the company’s $10M seed investment round through his VC firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Add to that its Series A round from 2023, Savor has raised $33M to date. “We expect to kick off a Series B fundraise in the second half of 2025 to pursue commercial scale-up,” reveals Alexander.

Longer term, the firm has its sights on more than just butter. “Scalability and flexibility make Savor’s fat solutions unparalleled in the industry,” she says. “Our ability to match the performance of animal fats, dairy fats, vegetable oils, tropical fats, as well as specialty oils used in the cosmetics industry – all with the same technological platform – sets us apart.”