Motif FoodWorks

Foodtech / plant-basedUSA

New to Unitard

💀 Dead / Bankrupt

Peak $1.23 BillionToday

~-100%

from peak

🦄
Became a unicorn
2021
📈
Peak valuation
$1.23 Billion ’21
💔
Became a Unitard
2024
💸
Last valuation
Wiped out

Capital raised

$345M

Total raised

$187K/day

Raised per day

Total raised averaged per day over approximately 5.0 years from founding to bankruptcy or shutdown. This is not measured cash burn. Methodology

Funding: AgFunder / Crunchbase

Current status

Shut down in 2024 after settling a multi-year IP lawsuit with Impossible Foods; sold its heme business to Impossible and wound down operations.

The rise & fall

5 moments · 2019–2024

The key moments.

2019

Spun out of Ginkgo Bioworks

Engineered ingredients — notably a heme protein — to make plant-based meat taste better; Bill Gates among the backers.

AgFunderNews

2021

The peak: a $226M Series B at ~$1.23B$1.23B

The alt-protein boom crowns the two-year-old ingredient maker a unicorn.

PitchBook

2022

Impossible Foods sues over heme

A multi-year patent war begins over the very ingredient Motif was built around.

AgFunderNews

2024

Settles, sells the heme, shuts down — joins the Unitard Club 💔

Motif ends the IP fight by selling its heme business to Impossible Foods, then winds down: ~$345M raised and a $1.23B peak, gone in five years.

AgFunderNews

$1.23Bof peak value erased · 5 years

How it happened

Motif FoodWorks, spun out of Ginkgo Bioworks in 2019, engineered ingredients (notably a heme protein) to make plant-based meat taste better. It raised $343.5M from investors including Bill Gates and was valued at ~$1.23B in 2021 (PitchBook).

After a costly multi-year IP fight with Impossible Foods and a souring alt-protein market, Motif settled with Impossible — selling it the heme business — and shut down in 2024.

Source: $226M Series B 2021 (~$1.23B post-money); shutdown 2024 (AgFunderNews)