Elo Life Systems, the next-generation ingredient company reimagining the future of food, today announced its oversubscribed Series A2 financing round, raising $20.5 million.
This funding will help Elo to scale up and commercialize its sweetener product, expand its molecular farming pipeline of healthy and sustainable ingredients and enhance its crop protection and productivity efforts. Elo’s goal is to unlock nature’s abilities to make consumers’ favorite foods more delicious, healthy and planet-friendly. Elo CEO Todd Rands said, “With strong support from our investors, we’re well positioned to scale up our production and stay on track to launch our first product in 2026.”
Elo produces sought-after ingredients that are hard to harvest from natural sources and cannot be synthesized through artificial or other techniques. The company uses easy-to-grow crops as biofactories for these ingredients, enabling local, commercial-scale production while reducing their cost and environmental footprint. “Molecular farming will allow our food system to meet the needs of the world’s growing population while reducing the resources needed to produce nutritious food,” said Stephen Van Helden, principal in the Bioindustrial Investments group at Novo Holdings US.
Elo’s first molecular-farming product is a natural, monk-fruit derived sweetener that is 300 times sweeter than sugar without calories – a “holy grail” of sweeteners. It can be used in thousands of food and beverage products to reduce sugar and artificial sweeteners while enhancing nutrition. Elo is also exploring the production of other ingredients, including novel proteins, natural preservatives, and high-value flavors and bio-actives.
Moreover, Elo is working with major companies and NGOs to protect staple crops around the globe from the effects of disease and climate change. This includes a partnership with Dole in the creation of a fungal-resistant Cavendish banana to save the popular fruit from extinction. Elo’s banana proved successful in greenhouse testing and is currently undergoing field trials in Latin America.
“Elo’s sweetener will be a major catalyst in the effort to lower sugar in our diets, improving human health and reducing the societal burden associated with chronic diseases,” said Kiersten Stead, managing partner, DCVC Bio. “Meanwhile, their efforts to protect and improve the productivity of staple crops like the banana will have a meaningful impact on the food billions of people rely upon every day.”
