April 17, 2019

Tyson Ventures has made an undisclosed investment in Clear Labs Inc., a next-generation food safety platform that employs robotics to detect harmful pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella.

In an age when food recalls and food safety scares not only endanger the consumer, but also have the ability to decimate a food or beverage company, food safety tech has become critical to production operations. As a result, the technologies behind the science have advanced at an accelerated rate and investors are taking note of the potential for return on investment that can be generated from a guaranteed safe food supply chain.

Founded in 2014, Clear Labs is the only automated food safety platform for routine pathogen detection. The company’s Clear Safety platform, which was launched in July of last year, offers the combination of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), advanced microbiology, robotic automation, data science and software analytics, and is able to provide 99 percent accuracy at significantly lower costs.

“Given that the global food industry continues to grow in size and complexity, food manufacturers need high-throughput, tunability, and accuracy to ensure safety and protect their supply chains. NGS is the perfect tool, representing the next era of food safety,” said Clear Labs in a company statement.

This new platform, which currently supports high-volume testing for salmonella with additional pathogens and software features expected to be added this year, engages in learning. It does this by collecting millions of data points per analysis that serve multiple purposes: to learn everything about a pathogen in a single test, and to serve as a foundation for new applications, including predictive risk assessment, nutrigenomics, and new product development, all while reducing testing times from three-to-five days to 24 hours.

“At Clear Labs, we enable major brands to capitalise on a new era of food safety technologies by advancing DNA sequencing, bioinformatics and robotics to create preventative food safety management systems,” said the company in a statement.

Tyson Ventures made news in 2016 when it was one of the first meat companies to invest in a meat alternative startup, acquiring a 5 percent stake in plant-based protein company Beyond Meat for an undisclosed amount.

This investment in Clear Labs is also a first for the venture fund, representing its first investment in food safety, and reflecting an expansion of its investment scope.

For Clear Labs, this investment is its second  in six months, following its closing of a $21 million Series B2 led by Menlo Ventures, and including Wing VC, Dentsu Ventures, Felicis, Sholsa, and additional food production companies.

“This round of funding was raised on the premise that what the industry needs is perfectly aligned with our product vision,” said Sasan Amini, CEO of Clear Labs at the time. “Food manufacturers and microbiology labs alike recognize that targeted NGS technology will not just fill the gaps left by legacy pathogen testing technologies like PCR, but propel the entire industry towards a failsafe food system.”

This investment from Tyson will not only help propel the industry, but will place Tyson at the spear point of highly-accurate, rapid-turnaround, food safety technology – something that is a key concern to many of today’s more connected consumers.

“We’re thrilled to have Tyson Ventures as an investor as we continue to help the food industry leverage the best technology for not only securing the food supply chain, but also tackling the need to sustainably feed a growing world,” noted Clear Labs.

-Lynda Kiernan