Hampton Creek Raises $90 Million To Take On Asia And Destroy Big Mayo
This comes only a few months after its last raise, which was a $23 million Series B funding.
Hampton Creek plans to use the money to improve the technology behind their plant-based egg replacement and grow their R&D efforts.
"Part of what we do is figure out out a way to get rid of s--- food that's bad for our bodies and bad for the planet. That all requires a different approach when it comes to technology," Hampton Creek founder and CEO Joshua Tetrick told us.
Hampton Creek will also use the new funds to accelerate its distribution efforts.
"We have distribution with some of the largest food companies in the world," Tetrick says, "and we've got to produce. We want to make sure we're not holding back. We want to grow much deeper in Asia than we already are."
"The way that consumers are buying and consuming food is undergoing massive change. And for a long time technology didn't play a role in food as it relates to the end consumer, but that's changing drastically and Hampton Creek is on the forefront of that," said Craig Shapiro at Collaborative Fund, a Hampton Creek investor.
Hampton creek will release two new products next year, an eggless pasta named Just Pasta and a scrambled egg replacement called Just Scrambled.
Their first product, a mayonnaise substitute called Just Mayo proved so successful that Unilever, the parent company of Hellmann's mayonnaise, is suing Hampton Creek for fraud after they saw sales decline.
The lawsuit is still pending but over 100,000 people have signed a Change.org petition asking Hellmann's to drop the lawsuit.
"Our long term ambition is to get rid of shitty food in the world," said Tetrick. "The only way the right thing wins, is when the right thing is ten times better than the wrong thing."
The round was led jointly by Khosla Ventures and Horizons Ventures who joined several high profile investors.
Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, Bryan Meehan, Executive Chairman of Blue Bottle Coffee, Bryan Johnson, founder of mobile and payment company, Braintree, and Nick Pritzker's Tao Capital Partners have all poured money into the latest round.
Uni-President Enterprises Corporation, one of the largest food conglomerates in Asia, and Far East Organization, a pioneer of food and beverage products in Southeast Asia, have also both contributed.