Plantible Takes Top Honors in Pitch Competition

The digital timer was set and an esteemed panel of expert judges were stationed with their laptops at the Taste of Science stage for IFT’s startup competition, The Pitch!, held on the final day of IFT FIRST. Six startup company finalists, who rose to the top of the virtual semifinals, competed to win $15,000 in prizes from partner Seeding The Future Foundation. Finalists each had five minutes to present their food innovation idea and two minutes to respond to one question from the judge’s table, which ranged from ideal target markets to how they planned to differentiate themselves from the competition.

“Never doubt a small group of thoughtful individuals to change the world; it’s the only thing that ever has,” said Seeding The Future Foundation founder Bernhard van Lengerich, quoting anthropologist and author Margaret Mead in his opening remarks. The message certainly held true for all ideas presented that day, although only three would score cash prizes.

The finalists who didn’t make the cut included companies Apex Compliance, Ayana Bio, and Montblanc AI, while Crush Dynamics and RedLeaf Biologics took the two runner’s-up spots. They scored $2,500 each for their innovations in upcycling the crush from winemaking and the cultivation of a sustainable and scalable variety of sorghum for botanical extract production.

The top prize of $10,000 went to Plantible Foods, founded by Tony Martins in 2018. “We are growing novel aquatic plants and we convert them into very functional food ingredients starting with a protein that’s more digestible, more nutrient-dense, and more functional than any other plant proteins on the market right now,” says Martins, referring to rubi, short for the rubisco enzyme found in leafy greens like kale, spinach, and lettuce.

“We are growing a more rubisco-efficient plant, opening the plant cells and removing the rubisco from the plant matter and selling it as a food ingredient. It’s a protein that’s an upgrade instead of a replacement.”

Martins is also incredibly proud of Plantible’s two-year-old West Texas–based commercial facility called Ranchito. The 100-acre facility has 90,000 square feet of greenhouses and has allowed the company to be the number one employer in the region, growing household incomes by 61%. “I think that’s what food has always been about, not only creating healthier, more nutritious and tasty products, but bringing rural communities along the way,” he says.ft