As a teenager in Munich, Oliver Zahn made the difficult choice to go vegetarian after learning about the horrors of animal agriculture. But the way he sees it, others won’t simply do the same.
That is, he says, unless the alternatives are nearly identical in flavor, texture, aroma and, crucially, price. Those are the selling points of Climax Foods, his Berkeley-based startup that has raised around $26 million to market plant-based substitutes for foods that are among the most difficult to mimic, such as aged cheeses.
The former head of data science at Google and lead data scientist at Impossible Foods said his expertise gives his startup an edge over