Funding profile · Food and consumer ingredients

Shiru

A reported $36 million across a seed, a Series A and a Series B, none of it in the SEC record. The only Form D that mentions Shiru was filed by someone else.

$36.0MTotal raised, company-reported (Nov 2024)
$0Form D dollars filed by Shiru, Inc. itself
$104,255Raised by a Gaingels SPV from 13 investors (Apr 2023)
$0Federal grant or contract dollars found on record

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Investors Source
Aug 2019 Y Combinator, Summer 2019 Not disclosed Y Combinator YC directory
Oct 2019 Seed $3.5M Led by Lux Capital, with S2G and CPT. Deena Shakir joined the board. Independent
Oct 27, 2021 Series A $17.0M Led by S2G Ventures, with Lux, CPT, Y Combinator, Emles, XFactor, Area VC, Peak State, The W Fund, SALT and Veronorte. Chuck Templeton joined the board. Company release
Apr 2023 SPV: Gaingels Shiru LLC $104,255 13 investors; managed by Gaingels Management LLC Form D
Nov 12, 2024 Series B $16.0M Led by S2G Ventures; CPT Capital, Lux Capital, Nourish Ventures, Meach Cove Capital Company release
2019 to 2026 Federal funding None found No NIH, NSF, USDA or DOE award on record Not found

What the filings show

Gaingels Shiru LLC · Form D · filed Apr 20, 2023

First sale
Apr 13, 2023
Type
Vermont LLC formed 2023, single-company vehicle
Offered
$104,255 equity
Sold
$104,255 · $0 remaining
Investors
13, all accredited · average about $8,020
Minimum
$255
Exemption
Rule 506(b)
Related persons
David Beatty, manager of Gaingels Management LLC, which manages the issuer
Filing
SEC EDGAR, CIK 0001963694

Reading the filings

  1. Shiru itself has never filed a Form D.EDGAR lists no registrant whose name begins with Shiru, and a full text search across all Form D filings returns exactly one hit: the Gaingels vehicle above. Issuers raising under Section 4(a)(2) file no Form D, so the absence does not mean no money moved. It means the $36 million total rests entirely on company statements, with no filed amount, investor count or first sale date to check it against.
  2. Thirteen investors at about $8,020 each.$104,255 divided by 13 is $8,019.62, against a stated minimum of $255. That is an angel syndicate writing small checks through a pooled vehicle, not an institution taking a position.
  3. The SPV sits in the gap between priced rounds.First sale was April 13, 2023, about eighteen months after the Series A closed and nineteen months before the Series B was announced. Inside that window Shiru commercialized OleoPro with Griffith Foods and, per AgFunderNews, cut staff at the end of 2023 to conserve cash.
  4. The totals reconcile, roughly.$3.5M plus $17M is $20.5M, matching the Series A language of more than $20 million. Adding the $16M Series B gives $36.5M against the $36M reported, a rounding difference rather than a missing round.
  5. There is no non-dilutive line.No NIH, NSF, USDA or DOE award appears, and USAspending returns zero for both grants and contracts. Every dollar on record is equity, which leaves partner payments and platform fees as the only other cash.
  6. One lead, twice.S2G Ventures led both priced rounds and was in the seed; Lux and CPT followed every time. No new lead has appeared since 2021 and no valuation has ever been disclosed.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Regulatory No GRAS notice for Shiru, OleoPro or uPro. uPro is potato protein, which carries GRN 447 (2013) and GRN 86 (2002) from other notifiers, both answered FDA has no questions. Public record
Product OleoPro and uPro in commercial production since April 2025, capacity stated at thousands of metric tons a year, gross-margin positive from launch. Company-stated
Customers Griffith Foods named as first revenue-generating customer in 2023. Over 30 agreements claimed; no other customer named, no revenue published. Company-stated
Partners CP Kelco, Puratos, Griffith Foods and Nourish Ventures, Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition, GreenLab, Ingredion. Partner-confirmed
Intellectual property US Patent 11,439,159 issued Sep 13, 2022. A separate OleoPro patent announced May 2024 without a number. Public record
Recognition TIME Best Inventions 2024; WEF Technology Pioneer, June 2025. Independent

What to watch

  • A first Form D under Shiru, Inc. A Regulation D raise requires one within 15 days of first sale.
  • Terms or a valuation for any round. None has been disclosed.
  • A financing after November 2024. None has been reported in nearly two years.

The Shiru story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Alixia: Shared investor: Gaingels. A San Francisco drug discovery company that treats a tumor as an ecosystem rather than as a single mutation
  • Ochre Bio: Shared investor: Gaingels. An Oxford company that designs RNA drugs and tests them in whole human donor livers kept alive on machines
  • Curebase: Shared investor: Gaingels. A clinical trial company that turned drive-through testing lines into research sites, then closed its services arm and became a software vendor
  • Parallel Bio: Shared investor: Gaingels. Miniature human lymph nodes, grown from donated tissue and run side by side across hundreds of donors, used to test drugs and vaccines before anyone takes them

Sources

  1. Public recordForm D, Gaingels Shiru LLC, CIK 0001963694SEC · filed Apr 20, 2023
  2. Public recordEDGAR company search and full text search for Shiru across Form D filingsSEC · run Sep 23, 2026
  3. Public recordFDA GRAS Notice Inventory searches for Shiru, OleoPro, uPro and potato proteinFDA · run Sep 23, 2026
  4. IndependentA former scientist at one of Silicon Valley’s top food startups just landed $3.5 millionBusiness Insider · Oct 24, 2019
  5. IndependentShiru raises $16m series B to expand AI-powered ingredient discovery platformAgFunderNews · Nov 12, 2024
  6. CompanyShiru Closes $17M Series A to Develop Novel Plant-Based Food IngredientsPR Newswire · Oct 27, 2021
  7. CompanyShiru launches commercial production of its AI-discovered ingredientsGlobeNewswire · Apr 24, 2025

Compiled from SEC, FDA and other public records and published reports as of September 23, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; amounts reflect the filing date and may not capture later sales. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Shiru. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.