Shiru

We’re thrilled to share the news of Shiru’s Series B, as well as plans to expand ProteinDiscovery.ai – our AI-powered discovery platform. This is hot on the heels of being named a TIME Best Invention of 2024. So you might ask what’s ahead? We’re scaling our capabilities to support more partners across food, personal care, and agriculture – bringing natural, high-value ingredients to life faster and more efficiently than ever before. Curious about how AI is disrupting ingredient discovery? Get in touch.

?? Exciting News! ?? I am thrilled to share that the project I had the privilege to develop alongside my incredible team has been selected by Time Magazine?as one of the 200 Best Inventions of 2024! This recognition is a testament to the hard work, innovation, and dedication of our entire team. Check this out: - Time Magazine Feature: https://lnkd.in/gtzjmbpn - The marketplace: https://lnkd.in/gXjyreWc A huge thank you to everyone involved. This milestone is just the beginning, and I am excited about what we will achieve together in the future! #teamwork #marketplace #proteins #innovation #TimeMagazine

I rarely post any self-generated content on LinkedIn. Today’s a little different, with news to share, so allow me to say a few things. First, I couldn’t be more proud than to work daily as a thought partner with Shiru’s dynamic founder & CEO, Dr. Jasmin Hume. Last year, she took a huge risk on me. And almost immediately, together we took a huge but calculated risk to begin restructuring Shiru’s strategies to position the company, in a vastly changed environment, to win. Collaborating with 1st-class colleagues, board members, and advisors, we not only navigated SynBio’s choppy waters that continue to lose many peer companies in the undertow, but we also worked with our exceptional teammates to ideate and unveil Shiru’s AI platform to the public this Spring. Today, that AI platform was recognized as a “Best Invention of 2024” by TIME. Starting my career nearly 30 years ago working for the small team built by Bill Morgan and Jim Shanahan not only trained me well for what I do today but it made me take for granted the consistent successes we achieved for our clients, investors, and ourselves, as I collaborated each day with top-notch teammates who worked tirelessly to generate real value. Until one day I found myself working with those who weren’t, didn’t, and couldn’t. As we head into November, I’m Thankful for the past and present Shiru teammates I’ve worked with. They helped re-instill my faith in building exceptional corporate cultures and values, achieving independently recognized success, driving value for our investors, and doing so with humility, confidence, decency and, dare I say, a woman as the Chief Executive in a place and space dominated by Tech Bros held to different standards. Over the coming weeks, each of Shiru as a company, and I personally, will share additional and separately exciting news. [This post is made solely in my personal capacity and not on behalf of or in my capacity as an agent of any client or employer] https://lnkd.in/gQYMQ8Bd

When Shiru started building?ProteinDiscovery.AI, I had a feeling we were onto something. This feeling stemmed from the conversations and situations that led to the idea, the research we conducted while we built it, and it's being validated by the speed at which the platform and the approach are now being adopted. But to be named as one of TIME’s 2024 Best Inventions?! I’m overflowing with pride and gratitude. This massive recognition of disruptive innovation is only possible thanks to my brilliant team - especially Geoffroy Dubourg-Felonneau, Ryan Leverenz, Michael Madonna, and David Groshoff. And, of course, a huge thanks to our investors, supporters, and believers. This acknowledgment is a huge win – not just for us but for the industry. Change is here, and I'm so ready for it!

We built?ProteinDiscovery.ai?for you. We believe deeply that faster and more sustainable ingredient development is critical for humanity. We provide this database of 33M functional proteins so that companies can drastically reduce R&D costs, accelerate time-to-market, and more sustainably source ingredients. The rapid embrace of the platform was validating. It confirmed that our industry was as hungry for new solutions as we were. Within three months of launching, we were managing more requests to scale ingredients than we could initially handle internally. Now, to be named as a TIME Best Invention of 2024 is a remarkable honor. Especially among peers who are helping people and our planet like Brightseed, Google DeepMind, REGENESIS Remediation Solutions, Farmerline Group, AM Batteries and ZeroAvia. Today, we celebrate all the teams making change for good. #TimeBestInventions https://lnkd.in/d-Q7Pfky

"The next generation of food technologies will be different.”?It has to be. Our food system has such a massive impact on climate and on human health that changing it for the better is urgent. Our protein scaffolding technology, uPro?,?is helping create healthier foods that maintain the taste and functionality people love—from juicier plant-based burgers to more stable sauces. This isn't just about replacing ingredients, it's about fundamentally reimagining how we create better-for-you foods that actually taste good. Read on to learn how we’re replacing saturated fats with?healthy,?unsaturated fats?with OleoPro??and developing sweetness without sugar, alongside some of our brilliant peers.

A protein-prediction AI just won the Nobel Prize. What does that mean for the future of food & our planet? ???? ? AlphaFold, Google’s protein-focused AI model, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last week. #AlphaFold is a groundbreaking AI model that made headlines when it beat every existing benchmark on the extremely hard problem of protein structure prediction: using a protein's amino acid sequence to predict its 3D folded shape. ? That was a few years ago. Since then, AlphaFold made waves in BioTech and pharma, taking drug discovery to a new level. It is widely recognized that this AI model has completely changed the playing field for medicine. But one topic that is rarely discussed is the transformative potential it has for FoodTech and for the climate crisis. ? A few #FoodTech companies already use AlphaFold in their process: for example, Shiru, which leverages it to discover new plant-based proteins that can replace animal-based ones, serving the same functionalities our current food system needs and desires. With the animal-based food industry being the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, any functionality that can be served by plant-based proteins is a net gain to our environment and planet. ? But what has already been done is just a fraction of the potential AlphaFold has for sustainable food technology. Especially with the new and improved AlphaFold 3 released earlier this year — now capable of predicting not only the protein’s 3D structure but also its interactions with other molecules — the opportunities are vast. It could be used for #CultivatedMeat, where the engineering of affordable media is a huge bottleneck, keeping many companies from scaling and commercializing. It could help with #PrecisionFermentation, an exciting technology where engineered microorganisms produce animal proteins with no animals involved – but is expensive to run, weighing down companies with its high operating costs. ? This #NobelPrize shines a spotlight on AlphaFold's incredible potential, but we're only beginning to scratch the surface of what it can do for sustainable food systems. As we face an escalating climate crisis, AlphaFold could be the key to unlocking a future where delicious, nutritious, and affordable food is produced in harmony with our planet and all its inhabitants. ? #AlphaFold #AI ?#Sustainability #AltProtein #AlternativeProtein #ClimateAction #ClimateTech #Sustainability #FutureofFood #ClimatexFood

This is huge. We’re so proud of David Baker, Demis Hassabis, and John M. Jumper – they revolutionized the field and opened up previously unreachable possibilities. Starting in 2019, we took these Nobel-worthy breakthroughs and created practical applications for natural proteins in cosmetics, food, and advanced materials. With ProteinDiscovery.AI and our discovery engine Flourish?, any ingredients company can leverage the power of these tools without needing a dedicated and highly trained team of ML experts or bioinformaticians. Not only do we have a technology platform that puts these breakthroughs in the hands of our customers, but we also have a scalable business “Platform as a Service” model to match. The future is exceptionally bright.

The deadline is coming up! Friday, September 6, is the last day to submit your team to our partner network, and the survey only takes 5 minutes to complete. Head to https://lnkd.in/etNdHner to connect with us, or share with a team you trust if they’d be a great fit.

Calling all bioprocess and engineering experts! We’re looking for partners to scale our capabilities and support the high level of inbound demand across key material production and process development initiatives. If that’s your team, visit shiru.com/partner-network to connect with us. When we launched ProteinDiscovery.ai earlier this year, we had a hunch there would be demand for our platform but had no idea to expect the level of inbound we’ve already received. Just three months after launching, we’re proud to share that we’re managing more requests to scale ingredients we’re discovering than we can handle internally. Fortunately, we know that there are numerous companies operating strain development, fermentation, and DSP at various scales as a service. We’re building a network of scaling partners to enable Shiru to focus on what we do best - AI-enabled protein discovery - while delivering high quality materials to our partners via end-to-end support by our expert team. Accelerating the transition to biobased materials won’t be done by one company alone, but by syndicates of best-in-class teams. Shiru’s protein discoveries will get to market faster with excellent partners working alongside us, and we’re requesting submissions from partners across the globe. By partnering, we provide an unparalleled value proposition to our customers as a one-stop-shop for protein discovery and creation at scales relevant for cosmetics, food, and advanced materials. Going from “I need a new protein ingredient” to relevant samples delivered to your lab has never been this easy, and we’re delighted to be building this new paradigm. If your team is a great fit, get in touch. And if you know a team who’d be a great fit, please share this opportunity with them. Let’s make accessing new, sustainable protein ingredients as easy as 1, 2, 3.