Fungi start-ups Infinite Roots and Bosque Foods have joined forces under one roof, with Bosque announcing its acquisition by Infinite Roots last week.

Both food-tech companies were founded in Germany, each focusing on developing sustainable, plant-based food products from mycelium (the root-like structure of fungi).

Since its establishment in 2020, Bosque Foods expanded with a team of 25 food scientists and engineers, working across New York, US, as well as Berlin. The company uses mycelium to develop clean-label and high-fibre plant-based alternatives to whole-cut meat products.

The company’s founder and CEO, Isabella Iglesias-Musachio, shared a statement on LinkedIn announcing the news.

She wrote: “This journey was the most challenging and rewarding of my career. The climate tech sector faced real headwinds over the past few years, and navigating that required resilience from everyone involved. Through it all, I was surrounded by people who believed in what we were building.”

She thanked the company’s workforce, partners and advisors, as well as its investors – which include FoodLabs, ProVeg Incubator, SOSV and others.

“Infinite Roots offered the right home for Bosque's technology to continue developing at scale,” she added. “As the mycelium category matures and consolidates around companies with the infrastructure to industrialise, their platform gives what we built a strong path forward – and that's exactly the outcome I hoped for.“

Infinite Roots said it will integrate Bosque Foods’ intellectual property and knowledge in solid-state fermentation, and whole-cut meat alternative development, into its food-tech platform.

Founded in Hamburg in 2018, Infinite Roots (formerly named Mushlabs) aims to make mycelium a ‘staple ingredient’ around the world. The company introduced its first mushroom-based food product under the MushRoots brand in Germany last year, a meatball-style format making its debut in the country’s foodservice market.

Founder and CEO Mazen Rizk said: “The next phase of mycelium will not be won by isolated breakthroughs alone, but by companies that can integrate biology, process data, IP and industrial execution”.]

Top image: © Bosque Foods