Danish food tech startup Matr Foods has raised €20M ($23M) in Series A funding for its mycelium meat alternatives, adding to the €20M debt funding it received from the EU in 2024.
Copenhagen-based Matr Foods has secured fresh funding to build a large-scale factory that can churn out thousands of tonnes of mycelium protein.
The company has received €20M ($23.2M) in Series A financing co-led by Novo Holdings (the owner of Ozempic maker Novo Nordisk) and the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark. This comes on top of a €20M ($22.2M at the time) debt investment from the European Investment Bank last year.
The fundraising total of €40M is the largest secured by a Danish food tech startup to date, and will be used to construct a commercial plant in Ansager. Set to be operational in 2027, it will enable Matr to expand its production capacity from 30 to 4,000 tonnes a year, and create around 60 jobs.
“Our current pilot site is in Nordhavn, Copenhagen. It will only remain functional until the new site is up a running. But we will keep R&D facilities and office in Copenhagen,” Matr CEO Randi Wahlsten tells Green Queen.
“We are building up [our] team in Germany and Switzerland, building out our commercial capabilities, and getting the organisation in gear to move from a startup to a scaling-production tech company,” she says.
“The next 12 months are all about scaling and preparing our internationalisation both in terms of brand, organisation, customers and production,” Wahlsten adds. “We have some very interesting pipeline projects that we are also kicking off in the coming months. So, a busy and exciting year ahead.”
Matr Foods’s products are selling out every month
A former executive at Danish dairy giant Arla, Wahlsten established Matr with Noma co-founder Claus Meyer, Morten Sommera, and Rasmus Toft-Kehler in 2021. The company employs a solid-state fermentation process to make its mycelium-derived meat analogues, inoculating upcycled ingredients like beetroots, potatoes, lupins, peas and oats with fungi spores.
Tiny roots called hyphae make up the mycelium and break down the nutrients in the mix, a process that releases flavour-packed amino acids and starches that enhances browning when cooked. The mycelium additionally binds all the ingredients together to create a juicy texture.
Matr adds beet juice, salt, thyme and garlic powder to its mince and burger, which have 8.5g of protein, 2.5g of saturated fat (0.5g of which is saturated) and 10g of dietary fibre per 100g. The products have an amino acid profile akin to meat, but with a carbon footprint of just 1.6kg CO2e per kg, 94% lower than that of beef.
Wahlsten believes that despite the sales slump, the appetite for meat alternatives is unchanged. That said, consumers and chefs are “asking more questions and looking for different answers”.
“Matr offers a new generation of products: it is real food of real whole organic vegetables and legumes, no additives and minimal processing. And at the same time, it delivers on unmatched juiciness and natural umami depth in the flavour,” she says. “That resonates. We are constantly met with reactions like ‘This is what I have been waiting for’ and people keep coming back for seconds and thirds.”
This is why Matr’s sales have bucked the trend seen in places like the US or the UK, where consumers have reduced their spending on plant-based meat. Wahlsten says the company’s revenues have been “as great as they could be” in 2024 and 2025.
“We have literally been 100% sold out every month. Demand both from current and new customers have been increasing, but our challenge has been that we can only produce so much from our current pilot site,” she says. “Therefore, we are super excited to finally unlock the industrial scale production to be able to finally serve those amazing customers who have been waiting for us to be able to deliver.”
Matr’s fungi patty and mince are available at Danish restaurant chains like Gasoline Grill, Rørt, and Gao Dumpling, and at all Sticks’n’Sushi locations in Denmark, Germany and the UK. The company has “a very nice pipeline” of new products in the works too.
Matr’s funding signals resurgence in future food investments
Matr’s €20M raise goes against the grain of alternative protein investment, which has slowed dramatically over the last couple of years. “It is very clear that there has been increasing insecurity in the market when it comes to green food tech and alternative proteins,” contends Wahlsten.
“While climate and human health are as important as ever, the public agenda has shifted more to trade wars and military threats, which has clearly affected the market both on consumer and investor level. I think there has also been some hesitation on whether the alternative protein technologies that received a lot of investments previously will be able to deliver all that we hoped for,” she adds.
Matr, she suggests, has a technology that “very clearly differentiates from what is in the market today and meets what consumers and customers are asking for”, reiterating the whole-food, clean-label, yet umami-rich attributs of its proteins.
“With food tech, it is not just about the words, the proof is in the experience. And that seems to have convinced the investors just as it has convinced, chefs, gastronomes, customers and consumers,” she says.
Thomas Grotkjær, a partner at Novo Holdings’s Planetary Health Investments team, blames the investment downturn on disappointment and a lack of patience. “Changing food patterns is not something that happens overnight, and even for myself, it has taken a decade or two to change my view on how we eat for a more sustainable future,” he tells Green Queen.
“There may have been a little bit of overpromising as well. However, the trend towards new food sources that are non-animal derived is strong, and it will continue. It is not a revolution; it is a marathon, and we have to keep that in mind.”
Highlighting what Novo Holdings looks for in its investment decisions, Grotkjær points to the confluence of biotechnology, gastronomy, and scalability. “When it comes to new food products, taste ultimately drives demand: if it’s not good, you can’t sell it, and therefore it’s not investable,” he says.
“While there are many great food concepts out there, without a clear biotech angle they don’t align with our investment logic. Scalability is also a key factor and is often underestimated, bringing technology from the lab to the real world is a major challenge. These three elements – strong science, great taste, and scalability – are what make Matr such an attractive investment for us.”
The funding comes amid an uptick in big funding rounds for alternative protein in Q3, which include The Better Meat Co‘s $31M round, Nxtfood‘s $58M raise, The Protein Brewery‘s $35M financing, and Revyve‘s $28M investment.
“At the end of the day, the problems we are all trying to solve are too important to drop, so I have no doubt that we will see investments picking up and stronger, better companies emerge out of this phase,” says Wahlsten.
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