On October 13, the second Pitch Day International took place, an online review of technology projects for the international partner community of the SWC ecosystem. Brazil’s Future Cow and the UAE’s Circa Biotech presented their technologies and answered questions from experts from different regions live on air.
Both projects operate at the intersection of biotechnology and food. Future Cow produces milk proteins with the help of microorganisms, without involving animals. Circa Biotech processes food waste with black soldier fly larvae and turns it into feed protein, organic fertilizer and oil. The broadcast ran in seven languages: Russian, English, Spanish, Vietnamese, French, German and Kyrgyz. For the first time, project presentations were available in each of these languages, and viewers could switch between versions during the presentations.
Two Industries with Growing Demand
Precision fermentation has long been familiar to the food industry: it is how chymosin, an enzyme used in cheesemaking, is produced, for example. The new direction is to use this method to make the main proteins of milk, the whey proteins and casein, which are then used in dairy products, protein blends and drinks. According to the analytics company Future Market Insights, the market for precision fermentation ingredient suppliers is worth about $4.1 billion in 2026 and will grow by an average of 18.2% a year through 2036.
Converting food waste with insects addresses several problems at once. Waste stops going to landfills, and it is turned into protein for feed and fertilizer for agriculture. For the UAE, this direction is tied to the national food security strategy through 2051: the country imports most of its food and is developing its own feed production. Another prospect concerns aviation. The EU’s ReFuelEU Aviation regulation requires fuel suppliers at EU airports to gradually increase the share of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), from 2% in 2025 to 70% by 2050. As a result, producers are looking for new feedstocks for SAF, including insect larvae oil.
Future Cow: Milk Protein from Yeast
Future Cow was founded in 2023 in São Paulo by entrepreneur Leonardo Vieira and food engineering specialist Rosana Goldbeck. The company programs yeast to produce proteins identical to cow proteins. It uses a digital copy of DNA for this, so animal cells are not needed. The yeast grows in fermentation tanks, and the process is in many ways similar to brewing, except that the output is milk proteins. According to the company, these proteins contain no lactose, hormones or antibiotics.
Future Cow works on a B2B model: the company plans to supply proteins to dairy and food manufacturers, who will add them to their products. Rosana Goldbeck leads the scientific side. According to the company, she has 15 years of research experience, 98 scientific publications and 10 patents, and she was included in Forbes’ “25 Women in Science” ranking. Leonardo Vieira has been an entrepreneur for more than 20 years and, according to the company, was nominated for the Earthshot Prize in 2024.
The startup received its first support in the resident program of the venture fund Antler in São Paulo. Antler and the Singapore-based fund Big Idea Ventures, for which Future Cow became the first portfolio company in Brazil, then invested in the company. The project also received state funding from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and the agency Embrapii under a program of the national energy and materials research center CNPEM. The company tests its technology on pilot plants at the CNPEM site in Campinas.
According to Leonardo Vieira, Future Cow has produced Brazil’s first whey protein identical to cow’s whey protein and is now completing its pilot phase. The next stage, planned for 2027, is the release of the first industrial batch and the completion of regulatory procedures in Brazil and the US.
Circa Biotech: Feed, Fertilizer and Oil from Food Waste
Circa Biotech was founded in the UAE by Dr. Haythem Riahi. Before starting the company, he spent more than 20 years at international life-science companies, including Bio-Rad and Danaher, and holds a PhD in microbiology and an MBA from the Sorbonne. Co-founder Ludmila Prozorova holds a PhD in engineering and an MBA from INSEAD and previously worked at OMV and ADNOC.
The company’s technology is based on industrial rearing of black soldier fly larvae. In about ten days the larvae process food waste, and three products are obtained from them: protein for animal feed, organic fertilizer and oil. The raw material comes from supermarkets and food businesses, which deliver the waste to the site themselves.
The company started with a pilot unit in Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, then carried out a laboratory project together with ADNOC and moved production to its own 1,600-square-meter site in Al Ain. Products have been on sale since 2023. In 2022, the Circa Biotech project was inaugurated by the UAE Minister of Climate Change and Environment, and the ministry signed a memorandum of support with the company. In 2023, Circa received the AgriTech Innovator of the Year award at the Sustainability Middle East Excellence Awards.
The company has been selected for several government and corporate startup support programs in the UAE. It took part in The Catalyst accelerator in Masdar City, which Masdar created together with bp. In 2024, Circa joined the 15th cohort of Hub71, Abu Dhabi’s technology ecosystem backed by the emirate’s government and the state fund Mubadala, and entered its climate track, Hub71+ ClimateTech. In the same year, the company completed the accelerator program of the Mohammed bin Rashid Innovation Fund (MBRIF), an initiative of the UAE Ministry of Finance, and won the best pitch prize at the demo day of its eighth cohort. In 2025, Circa was selected for Launchpad, a circular economy cycle run by the UAE Independent Climate Change Accelerators together with the UAE Ministry of Economy. The company was also recognized at the 22nd ceremony of the Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award.
A separate line of development concerns larvae oil. Together with ADNOC, the company tested it as a drilling lubricant, and it also developed a patented process that turns the oil into a feedstock for SAF production at existing biorefineries. The company plans to certify the aviation line by 2029. Circa’s partners, besides ADNOC, include Thailand’s Energy Absolute, which builds large biorefining plants.
“Future Cow and Circa Biotech are working on problems that concern everyone: how to produce food with less pressure on natural resources and how to make use of food waste. Both teams have already taken their technologies beyond the laboratory, and we were interested in discussing with them how they plan to develop production further,” said Alexey Sukhodoev, co-founder of SWC.
How Projects Get Selected for Review
Before being shown to the community, each project goes through a multi-level review in four areas. The technology review shows whether the technology exists, whether the prototype works and what the patents protect. The financial and legal review covers the company’s structure, intellectual property rights and the transparency of financial flows. Market analysis assesses market size, demand and competitors. The team assessment looks at the experience of the founders and technical leaders.
At the second Pitch Day International, the projects had an international expert board for the first time. Its members were Rosemary Kirner, who leads the D-A-C-H region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland), Ho Van Loi, who represents the Vietnam region, and SWC co-founder Alexey Sukhodoev. The experts asked the founders about scaling production, demand from future buyers, patent protection and business development.
“It is important to us that community members get to know projects through a live conversation with their founders. At the second broadcast we added an international expert board and presentations in all the broadcast languages. The questions that came from the experts and the chat help both us and the teams themselves better understand what interests an international audience,” said Alexey Sukhodoev, SWC co-founder.
How Participants Evaluate the Projects
After each presentation, viewers answered three questions in Zoom: how much they trust the project, how valuable they consider it, and whether they would like to see it on the SWC Field showcase.
What’s Next
After the broadcast, participants received short materials on both projects, and a vote opened in the community chat that will run for seven calendar days. Its results, together with the poll results, will be taken into account when deciding whether the projects appear on the SWC Field showcase. Answers to the questions viewers asked in the broadcast chat will be published separately by the organizers. The next review is planned for a month from now. A project can be submitted to the analytical team for initial review on the SWC Field platform via this link.
This material is for informational purposes only and is not individual investment advice or an offer to acquire any financial instruments. Company information is based on data from the companies themselves and open sources.