Miruku

What Miruku does

Rather than fermenting in tanks, it recruits plant cells as small factories that can be grown and harvested within existing agriculture.

The secret

Choosing safflower over soy was a regulatory decision as much as an agronomic one. Safflower sidesteps allergen and approval friction and grows well in the hot, dry conditions of California and Australia, so the crop can scale on farmland that already exists instead of inside fermentation plants that have to be built.

Why NZVC invested in Miruku

NZVC invested in Miruku from NZVC Fund I. We file the company under Ag-tech and Climate on the portfolio wall.

We backed Miruku because global demand for sustainable dairy proteins is large and rising, and molecular farming offers a route to make them at agricultural scale and cost rather than in expensive fermentation plants. The team builds at the frontier of applied plant science and was the first molecular farming dairy company in the Asia Pacific region, giving it an early lead in a crowded global race. New Zealand's dairy and plant science strengths make it a natural place to build this, and we backed the science and the ambition early.

Miruku in the press

• Miruku raised $5 million in a pre-Series A for molecular-farmed dairyGreen Queen, vegconomist · 19 February 2024
• Miruku grabs more capital as its plant-based dairy tech reaches proof of conceptTechCrunch · 18 February 2024
• Molecular farming startup Miruku secures $8m in cap raiseNBR · 16 February 2024
• Miruku raised $2.4 million in seed fundingFoodBev Media · 23 March 2022