An investment fund founded by Bill Gates has contributed millions of dollars to a vaccine developer looking to create a livestock vaccine, according to a report from Axios.
$26.5 million has been raised through venture capital funding to create a vaccine reducing methane gas emissions.
ArkeaBio, a Boston-based vaccine developer, received $12 million from Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV).
Additional funding came from Grantham Foundation, AgriZeroNZ, Rabo Ventures, Overview Capital, and The51 Food & AgTech Fund.
Last year, Bill Gates invested in an Australian startup company that is also seeking to combat methane emissions from cows.
“Australian climate technology company Rumin8 has closed Phase 2 of its seed funding round, led by Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) with participation from Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s agri-food business Harvest Road Group. The funding will be used to accelerate Rumin8’s road to commercialisation,” read a press release.
“Rumin8 is an Australian climate technology company designing solutions to radically reduce methane emissions in agriculture,” the release continued. “The Company identifies naturally occurring compounds that have anti-methanogenic properties and reproduces them in a highly efficient, low-cost, scalable, and high-quality process to feed to livestock to reduce their emissions.”
“The demand for sustainable protein has never been more apparent, which is why BEV is keenly interested in reducing methane emissions from beef and dairy,” said BEV’s Carmichael Roberts. “Rumin8 offers a low cost, scalable toolbox that has already proven to be effective in reducing emissions. Our team will support Rumin8 in working closely with farmers to expand the reach of this solution globally.”
In November 2022, Rumin8 announced it was creating an office in San Francisco, California.
“The appetite for methane reducing solutions is astounding in the US market and participants in both dairy and beef have pushed open a door for us to enter the market,” Rumin8 Chief Commercial Officer Kosta Stavreas explained at the time.
“The United States has the second largest cattle herd in the world, so it is an important potential market for Rumin8,” Rumin8 Managing Director David Messina added.
Despite being a climate change proponent, Bill Gates said during an event last year that “the planet is going to be fine.”
“There’s a lot of climate exaggeration,” he said. “The climate is not the end of the planet. So the planet is going to be fine.”
