Finnish foodtech Onego Bio secures €37M in a Series A round

Onego Bio, a Helsinki-based food-biotech company, has announced its fresh €36.5 million Series A funding round. The investment was led by the Japanese-Finnish NordicNinja VC, and included equity investments from Tesi and EIT Food, as well as existing investors Agronomics, Maki.vc, Holdix, and Turret.

• Onego Bio was founded in 2022 as a spin-off from VTT (Technical Research Center of Finland) by Maija Itkonen (CEO) and Christopher Landowski (CTO). Through cellular agriculture, Onego Bio develops and commercializes Bioalbumen, an animal-free egg-white. The production process equals a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and a 95% decrease in land use (Nature Food 2021).

• According to the startup founders, their egg protein produced without chickens also provides a sustainable and stable supply of one of the most used protein sources by the food industry. It also demonstrated industrial production potential of 120 g/L in 250 000 L fermentation vessels allowing to reach competitive price points with the conventional way of making egg protein. 

Egg protein remains one of nature’s most perfect foods; this single ingredient supplies more than 20 different functional benefits from aeration to emulsification and gelation. While it may sound scientific, the value is in our mouths every day with velvety cake structures, silky-smooth mayonnaises, crispy nugget batterings, or those chewy-fluffy nougat fillings, just to mention few,

Maija Itkonen, сo-founder and CEO of Onego Bio, says.

• The investment was led by the Finnish-Japanese VC firm NordicNinja, which invests in companies within sustainability and digital society. The fresh round also included equity investments from Tesi, a Finnish state-owned market-driven investment company, and EIT Food, a knowledge and innovation community dedicated to making a food system more sustainable. 
• Existing investors such as Agronomics, Maki.vc, Holdix, Turret, and certain strategic partners also participated in the round. The Series A round also includes a $10 million non-dilutive funding from Business Finland, a public organization under the Finnish Government.

The company will use its recent funding to fuel its North American go-to-market strategy, including scaling up to industrial-level production and expanding its US commercial team. Onego Bio also plans to receive self-affirmed GRAS status for Bioalbumen this year, with a no objections letter expected from the FDA in 2025.