Israeli Startup Plantopia Raises $9 Million to Revolutionize Cheese Alternatives

Israeli startup Plantopia announced the completion of a $9 million pre-Series A funding round led by the American dairy giant Schreiber Foods, with participation from local food companies Tnuva, Yotvata, and Tempo. The funds will be used to establish a production facility in Kibbutz Sdot Yam, expected to begin operations in the third quarter of 2026, for manufacturing oat sprout-based cheese substitutes.

Plantopia claims its innovative biotechnology, developed at the Hebrew University's Faculty of Agriculture, enables the extraction of casein protein from oat sprouts. Casein is the key protein responsible for the melting and stretching properties of real cheese, which is typically missing in existing plant-based cheese alternatives. This breakthrough allows Plantopia’s products to mimic the texture and meltability of traditional cheese more accurately than current vegan options.

Founded in 2018 in Kiryat Shmona by Professor Alexander Weinstein, CEO Tal Lotzki, and Amir Tiruler, Plantopia has now raised a total of $16 million. The company is preparing to submit a Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS) safety petition to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the coming months.

The startup’s CEO, Tal Lotzki, emphasized that their technological achievement will enable the production of cheese alternatives that match the quality of dairy cheese while addressing the growing demand for protein consumption and offering a more sustainable option to reduce environmental impact. The move comes amid rising prices for whey protein in the U.S., driven partly by increased use of GLP-1 weight loss drugs requiring higher protein intake to maintain muscle mass.

Plantopia’s approach could disrupt the plant-based cheese market by overcoming the key limitation of current products, which often fail to melt and stretch like real cheese due to the absence of casein. The new factory in Sdot Yam aims to meet this demand with scalable production of these innovative cheese substitutes.