Star Tech: Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed champions alt-meat cause

Black Sheep Foods, a San Francisco-based food- tech start-up, is redefining the term ‘alt-meat’, by crafting delicious meat flavours beyond the usual suspects— and doing it using plants.

First up is lamb made from plants. The company has raised $12.3 million (Dh45.18 million) in Series A funding led by plant-based venture veterans Unovis — early investor in Oatly and Beyond Meat — alongside Bessemer Ventures Partners, AgFunder, and KBW Ventures, bringing total investment to $18.05 million (Dh66.30 million) since the company’s founding in 2019.

This round helps accelerate Black Sheep Foods’ journey to bring consumers flavour freedom in the meat section, and to scale up production for its debut lamb made from plants for national distribution.

In the Middle East, where consumers are especially discerning about their lamb, a meat that is featured in many national dishes, Black Sheep Foods is also garnering high praise.

Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed, the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region’s preeminent green-tech investor, founder of KBW Ventures, and early investor in alt-proteins, participated in this funding round after tasting Black Sheep Foods’ lamb.

Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed confirmed his latest investment to Khaleej Times in an exclusive interview. Building on his portfolio of green technology investments, the latest capital deployment is the Series A round of Black Sheep Foods through the Prince’s investment firm, KBW Ventures.

This is the latest in a string of green technology companies that have got the Prince’s backing. He also has an agri-tech investment in the US that recently launched a new facility, again making him the only regional venture capitalist to have a firm footing in green technology venture-backed start-ups outside the Mena region.

Prior to Black Sheep Foods, KBW Ventures took part in a $40-million (Dh146.92 million) Series B fund-raising by Eclipse Foods, another food tech concern working on the future of food. The Saudi prince is the son of famed billionaire philanthropist Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who has invested in Apple, Twitter, Snap, Lyft, amongst others.

The Prince explained his reasons to invest.

“I have a few reasons — founding a team is on top of the list. They are passionate about making a positive mark on the food system and giving us healthy alternative proteins that taste great.

"The product’s nutritional profile is impressive, and Black Sheep Foods is doing what most Silicon Valley food tech isn’t: They are looking beyond North America for the food that the rest of the world eats several times per week. Heritage meats is a really underserved market in terms of alt-protein innovation, and there is a big flavour profile pipeline ripe for exploration.”

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Black Sheep Foods promises to disrupt the sector.

“I always hesitate to say any company will ‘disrupt’; it’s more like enhancing the situation or building better alternatives to give people more choice while alleviating a lot of the downsides of your favourite meal.

"I think of a lot of alt-protein options as food 2.0 — great tasting, easier on the environment, doesn’t involve using so many of our quickly dwindling resources. We need to feed billions of people, and alt-protein food companies like Black Sheep Foods are giving us quick paths to food security.”

UAE Food Tech Challenge

The Prince is also a judge for the UAE Food Tech Challenge and elaborated on the exciting competition.

“I’m a finale judge alongside some of the UAE’s future builders; I’m very pleased to participate and support UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment, Mariam bint Mohammed Saeed Hareb Almheiri, and Tamkeen on this initiative. The challenge is searching for food technology and agri-tech innovators who are addressing either food production or food loss and waste."

The competition attracted 667 submissions from 79 countries and seeks to find the next wave of technology innovations that are on the cusp of transforming food and traditional agriculture practices, efficiently, and sustainably.

"The start-ups should be fairly early stage and have relevance to the UAE’s business climate with application in the country that makes sense. We’ve got a really strong roster of finalists, and I’m looking forward to hearing the final pitches during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week.”

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As a technology investor, the Prince seems to have his finger on the pulse of these big shifts in what’s relevant.

“I’ve always been interested in technology, building my own computers, messing around with devices, this type of thing. But the intersection of technology and investments really stemmed a lot from seeing the earliest days of what the most relevant companies in the world with my father are now.

I was fortunate to see a lot of the early start-up days, and I think that played a big role in my interest to merge my passions: hence venture capital (VC).

The product’s nutritional profile is impressive, and Black Sheep Foods is doing what most Silicon Valley food tech isn’t: they are looking beyond North America for the food that the rest of the world eats several times per week — Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed