Saudi venture capital (VC) firm KBW Ventures announced on Monday that it participated in the pre-seed funding round for TurtleTree Labs, a Singapore-based biotech start-up working on a new technology to produce milk from animal cells with no animal required.

KBW is yet to disclose the how much it has invested in TurtleTree Labs.

According to a statement from the VC, TurtleTree’s proprietary technology uses mammary cells to produce real, full milk in clean food production facilities and will be sold as a food product.

The technology allows for not just the full functionality of dairy milk but will disrupt the existing baby formula industry.

The pre-seed round was led by Lever VC, a US-Hong Kong venture capital fund specializing in alternative protein investments and Singapore-based technology-focused VC company K2 Global.

“KBW Ventures’ interest in TurtleTree stems from both the team vision and the company’s strategic approach to the future of food using stem cell technology,” said Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, founder and Chief Executive Officer, KBW Ventures.

Turtle Tree is KBW Venture’s fourth biotech investment after Memphis Meats, Bond Pet Foods and a cellular agriculture investment that is likely to be announced next month, a company spokesperson confirmed with Zawya.

The press statement said the seed funding would be used to further build out the company’s scientific team and to create additional prototypes, adding that the company plans to publicly debut the world’s first cultivated milk products in the coming months.

Read here.

(Writing by Anoop Menon anoop.menon@refinitiv.com ,Editing by Seban Scaria)

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