Following more than two years of research and development by scientists and engineers, Climax revealed what it calls “The 1st Generation of Zero-Compromise Plant-Based Foods” with the introduction of its dairy-free cheeses to select audiences in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
At the private, salon-format events, Climax introduced four varieties of its cultured and aged Blue, Brie, Feta and Chèvre (commonly known as “goat cheese”) cheeses. Climax promises to be the first to create plant-based cheeses that are reportedly indistinguishable from their dairy counterparts, at price parity, with higher protein, lower saturated fat and sodium than other plant-based cheeses. All cheese varieties rely on clean, sustainable ingredients such as seeds, legumes and plant-based fats and do not contain any nuts, pressed oils or GMO ingredients.
Climax has developed a machine-learning platform that creates plant-based recipes to best replace animal products, something that would take humans millions of years to do, according to the company. Its proprietary protein, texture, and proprietary smell and taste modules enable Climax scientists to identify optimal combinations of plants, from the 300,000 edible plants, and optimal processing combinations from heat, fermentation and aging.
In its oversubscribed seed round, Climax secured $26M to build a state-of-the-art food analytics lab that examines at molecular and macroscopic levels why animal products taste the way they do. These efforts have yielded large proprietary databases about the functionality of plants, and Climax uses them to train its machine intelligence tools for data driven high throughput prototyping.
