Cricket Bars? Plant-Based Fake Meat? Venture Capitalists Are Eating This Stuff Up.
Brooklyn-based Exo, which makes a line of cricket-flour protein bars, raised $1.2 million last quarter.
If you think that all the hype about eating crickets and other crawly things is just a bunch of hippie-dippie pipe-dream stuff, well, your friends in finance seem to disagree.
The Wall Street Journal reports that specialty food startups like Brooklyn-based Exo, which manufactures a cricket-flour-based energy bar, have attracted a record amount of investment monies from venture capital firms — some $83.4 million in total — during the third quarter of this year.
Exo itself raised about $1.2 million from various investors, the Journal reports. (Read our interview with Kyle Connaughton, the chef who developed the company's cricket bar recipe, here.)
But, the most impressive haul goes to Impossible Foods, a California company that is developing a line of imitation meats and cheeses made entirely from plants. That outfit netted a whopping $75 million, with Google Ventures notably chipping in.
It's the same company that made headlines last month by creating a veggie burger that "bleeds" just like a bloody rare beef patty.
At least the group won't have to worry about being "in the red," financially, anyway.
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