NovoNutrients

United States - Sunnyvale, California

• 03/03/2022
• Unknown
• $12,600,000

NovoNutrients is a fundamentally new way to make the building blocks of food, using natural microbes to break down molecules and reassemble them into lowest-cost feed and food ingredients. The process's key inputs are hydrogen and carbon dioxide. Those untreated, waste emissions of CO2 can come from industrial production of cement, ethanol, pulp, paper, fuels, or many other products. Gasification, SMR, and electrolysis (of water) all produce hydrogen. The latter means our tech will be a conduit from generating clean power to storing food energy. Advantaged in cost, quality, and sustainability, we’ll initially disrupt the aquaculture portions of two large feed ingredient markets: additives and “fishmeal”, the protein feed ingredient made from fish (soon $40B and $12B, respectively). Our initial market focus is protein for seafood farming, but the company is also starting to put similar resources into developing products to accelerate a global transition away from all conventional meat and fish.

[Oakbio, Inc. doing business as NovoNutrients]

Related People

David TzeFounder

United States - San Francisco Bay Area

Leading the food and feed from CO2™ bio company, NovoNutrients, that's cleanly transforming carbon dioxide emissions into alternative protein ingredients. In 2017, David engaged with NovoNutrients: investing in it, pivoting it, and taking his current role as its CEO. David had been the sole manager of Aquacopia. That seed-stage fund and its five-company portfolio had a thematic focus on aquaculture. The companies ranged from an aquafeed ingredient manufacturer to a distributor and marketer of sustainable seafood. The fund also led investments into Open Blue, InnovaSea, and Futuna. Including a prior start-up that David co-founded, those six companies raised $250M. That prior start-up, an online industrial marketplace called NetworkOil and then Network International, was acquired by Liquidity Services (NASDAQ: LQDT). After earning an economics A.B. from Princeton, David’s career had started with internet pioneering that was a mix of general management, entrepreneurial corporate development, and consultative sales of strategic technology and media services.

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidtze/