News & Events
Celleste Bio™ Announces Major Milestone for Cocoa Industry: Production of First Chocolate Grade Cocoa Butter Using Cell Cultured Technology
15 October 2025
Portfolio company Celleste Bio™, an early-stage cocoa tech company, announced a major milestone in building a climate resilient cocoa supply. Celleste unveiled its chocolate grade cocoa butter, the first made using plant cell culture technology.
Celleste is one of the first to pioneer the use of cell culture technology to produce real cocoa ingredients, with its chocolate grade cocoa butter being a breakthrough for the industry in that it is:
- Bio-identical to cocoa butter extracted from the bean, both chemically and functionally.
- Yields the same fatty acid profile essential for producing real chocolate.
- Delivers the same sensory qualities such as melting point, smooth texture, and characteristic “snap” of premium chocolate.
- Designed for scalability, enabling stable, sustainable production independent of agricultural limitations.
- Generates zero waste, using all inputs efficiently throughout the process
Cocoa is in fact a big business. Chocolate manufacturers spend about $16 billion on cocoa ingredients a year, with cocoa butter making up nearly half of that. In 2024 prices increased 400 percent due to a half billion-ton shortage.
And while prices and crop yields stabilize at certain points, experts say long-term instability is the ‘new normal’ and technology is the only way to stabilize the future.
Celleste is in the process of building a pilot facility to accelerate R&D and scale production of its cocoa ingredients.
To date, Celleste Bio has raised $5.6 million, including Mondelēz International as a strategic and design partner, along with Supply Change Capital, Trendlines, Barrel Ventures and others.
This news appeared in the following publications: Green Queen Media, Food Ingredients First, Food Navigator, Food Dive
Our ability to produce real cocoa butter via cell culture proves that science can be used to grow and produce ingredients that mirror nature with integrity and transparency. This is a major R&D achievement for Celleste led by Hanne Volpin, PhD, CTO of Celleste, and her R&D team, and also validation for the entire cocoa industry that there is a solution to supplement supply chain shortages caused by the volatility and unpredictability of traditional farming.
Michal Berresi Golomb, CEO of Celleste Bio.
It’s important to understand, technology doesn’t replace traditional farming. It is an ‘insurance policy’ against imminent supply chain disruptions and destruction caused by pests, disease, land and water overuse – as well as those that will arise from climate and agricultural instability. Celleste Bio is one example of a technology that is getting ahead of a long-term crisis. Cocoa butter is the single most important, expensive and resource intensive ingredient in chocolate and if we’ve learned anything from last year, it’s that solutions for crop supplementation are crucial.
Howard Yano Shapiro, retired Chief Agriculture Officer at Mars, Incorporated.
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