Great Circle Ventures

Founded in 2023, Great Circle Ventures is a venture capital firm that invests in the food, beverage, farming, and biotechnology sectors.

Jacob Afriat

Managing Partner

9 past transactions

Supergut

Seed Round in 2024
Supergut is a nutrition company based in Los Angeles, California, founded in 2019. It specializes in producing and retailing clinically validated nutritional products designed to address common health conditions through the gut microbiome. Supergut's product line includes a variety of flavorful nutritional shakes that contain resistant starch, a prebiotic fiber that supports a healthy gut microbiome. These shakes are formulated to enhance the body's natural ability to manage blood sugar levels, satisfy hunger, and strengthen immunity, thereby helping individuals boost and balance their immune system.

Equii

Convertible Note in 2023
Equii is a food technology company that discovers nutritious microbial proteins from various sources. These are used to ferment grains, resulting in high-protein grain flours.

Bend

Pre Seed Round in 2023
Bend is a financial technology company focused on supporting climate-friendly businesses through innovative solutions. It offers corporate cards specifically designed for these enterprises, enhancing their financial management while promoting sustainability. Additionally, Bend operates a climate assessment platform that transforms CO2e emissions data into a programmable and queryable format. This platform provides a comprehensive database of merchant-specific CO2e information and enables clients to estimate their carbon footprint based on spending. By facilitating the tracking of emissions and supporting companies in their efforts to reduce carbon output, Bend plays a crucial role in helping businesses navigate their sustainability goals and measure their supply chain impact.

SOBO Foods

Pre Seed Round in 2023
SOBO Foods, established in Thousand Oaks, California, specializes in the production and distribution of plant-based comfort foods inspired by Asian-American cuisine. Their product line features veggie-packed recipes designed to evoke nostalgia and satisfy cravings for comforting meals, all while being entirely plant-based.

demi

Pre Seed Round in 2023
Demi is a company focused on promoting composting as a mainstream practice, specifically targeting the 40 million Americans living in apartments who collectively produce over 200 million pounds of food waste weekly. By partnering with residential buildings, Demi provides a tech-enabled "compost-as-a-service" system that includes aesthetically designed bins, smart collection pods, and a user-friendly mobile app. This service not only simplifies the composting process but also serves as a valuable amenity that can help reduce traditional waste management costs. Additionally, Demi's offerings support sustainability and wellness certifications, allowing communities to enhance their environmental credentials while contributing to lower emissions. Through its innovative approach, Demi aims to foster a culture of composting, making it accessible and beneficial for urban dwellers.

Hedgehog

Pre Seed Round in 2022
Hedgehog develops technology for fungi cultivation that lowers costs and enables large-scale production. Its AI-driven discovery platform identifies microbiomes that support faster and more efficient fungal growth, enabling low-cost production of fungi-based products such as mushrooms, mycelium protein, feed amendments, and bulk animal feed. In addition to its platform, Hedgehog produces organic mushrooms for culinary use, known for a meaty umami flavor and nutritional benefits including fiber, protein, and antioxidants. The company was founded in 2022.

Pow.bio

Convertible Note in 2021
Pow.bio is a fermentation technology company that offers intelligent, AI-enabled fermentation solutions for industrial and synthetic biology. Its approach combines continuous fermentation with real-time process control to quickly optimize bioprocesses and achieve high yields at lower costs. The company supports scales from small laboratory setups to about 100 liters, handling bacteria, yeast, and filamentous fungi, and supplies bioreactor-agnostic hardware to fit diverse production lines. By replacing traditional fed-batch methods with AI-driven control, Pow.bio enables biotech, food, and industrial producers to reduce production costs, shorten development timelines, and scale sustainable bio-based products.

California Cultured

Seed Round in 2021
California Cultured is a food company based in Davis, California, that specializes in creating sustainable, lab-grown cocoa and coffee through advanced cellular agriculture techniques. Founded in 2020, the company focuses on producing cocoa that is less bitter and requires less sugar, while also ensuring its products are healthier for consumers. By stimulating cocoa cell growth using common food ingredients, California Cultured aims to provide high-quality cocoa products that are free from the ethical issues traditionally associated with cocoa production, such as slavery and deforestation. This innovative approach allows customers to enjoy delicious and sustainable cocoa without the environmental and social drawbacks of conventional methods.

Dispatch Goods

Pre Seed Round in 2021
Dispatch Goods designs and provides reusable packaging for the food service and delivery ecosystem. It manufactures reusable steel containers and operates a reverse logistics platform that collects, sanitizes, and returns containers, enabling restaurants, food trucks, and meal-delivery services to replace disposable packaging. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco, the company aims to deliver immediate cost savings for enterprise customers while reducing waste and carbon footprint by eliminating single-use packaging.
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