CHICAGO — Hyfé Foods, a sustainable foodtech company that produces low-carb, protein-rich mycelium flour (made from the root-like structure of fungi), announced an oversubscribed investment led by The Engine, a Cambridge, MA-based venture firm spun out of MIT.
Along with angel investors including restaurateurs and founders, other investors participating in the pre-seed round include Blue Horizon, Caffeinated Capital, Supply Change Capital, Lifely, Gaingels, and Hack Ventures.
In addition to the investment from The Engine, the Chicago-based company was also awarded a Department of Energy Grant through the Chain Reaction Innovations Accelerator at Argonne National Labs. The funding will accelerate Hyfé’s timeline to scale up toward commercialization.
The company was co-founded in 2021 by CEO Michelle Ruiz and CTO Andrea Schoen, former engineers at ExxonMobil and LanzaTech. Ruiz, an immigrant from Ecuador, is a Carnegie Mellon chemical engineer with more than a decade of manufacturing experience, with bioengineering expertise in wastewater treatment. Schoen is a Northwestern and University of Wisconsin bioengineer and registered patent agent who supported the startup of the world’s first commercial-scale gas fermentation plant.
“We’re on a mission to make food better for you as well as better for the planet,” Ruiz said. “Hyfé’s mycelium flour tastes and acts just like wheat flour, enabling people to eat the foods they love without negative health impacts. We are leveraging biotechnology to produce this ingredient that is carbon neutral, at scale, and at a very low cost.”
The company has developed a carbon-neutral method to produce affordable, high-protein, low-carb and allergen-free fungi flour through upcycling wasted sugar water. Its technology is versatile among supply chains and environmental conditions, and the use of upcycled water feedstocks not only reduces the water intensity of fermentation but also diverts these feedstocks from wastewater treatment facilities.
Enabling localized mycelium production to create this product benefits efforts to combat food shortages, making it possible to produce in remote or poor agricultural quality environments.
“Hyfé stands out because it operates at the intersection of climate and health and uniquely delivers a cost-effective solution,” said Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner at The Engine. “We were impressed with Michelle and Andrea’s vision for discovering a way to produce nutritious food at scale without the need for agriculture, fresh water, or much space.”