Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a Facebook founder are among those who have invested $75m in the company that has produced a plant-based burger that “bleeds”.

Impossible Foods created the Impossible Burger from wheat, coconut oil and potatoes. It also has an ingredient which it claims gives the burger the characteristic colour and taste of meat - soy leghemoglobin.

Impossible Foods claims that making burgers from plants instead of cattle uses 5% of the land, 25% of water and 12.5% of the greenhouse emissions.

Biochemistry

Impossible Foods was founded in 2011 by ex-Stanford University biochemistry professor Patrick Brown and the Impossble Burger is on sale in restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, Texas, and San Francisco.

The money from Bill Gates, Singapore-based wealth fund Temasek, Khosla Ventures, Horizon Ventures and Open Philanthropy Project, whose main funder is Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, will be used to expand production of plant-based products in a new factory in California.

Danone pays 25 times earnings for US health foods business

Bill Gates invests in plant-based Impossible Burger that ‘bleeds’

High tech investors, including Gates, have invested $75m in the company behind the plant-based burger.