Virdalis team
Singapore-based Virdalis has closed a US$700,000 pre-seed round led by Wavemaker Impact, as the biotech startup develops a feed-grade protein ingredient made from Wolffia globosa, a tiny plant better known as duckweed.
The pitch is blunt: most countries are still buying a critical food-system input from a small club of producer nations, and that concentration is a vulnerability.
Also Read: Asia’s biotech boom: Innovation, investment, and a new era of discovery
The company is going after a market it values at more than US$500 billion a year for global animal feed, with protein ingredients alone worth about US$300 billion.
But the bigger claim isn’t market size; it’s sovereignty. Feed protein is shipped across oceans, priced through volatile commodity markets, and exposed to geopolitical shocks. For Southeast Asia, where aquaculture and livestock supply chains are central to food security, that dependence is not theoretical.
Virdalis argues there hasn’t been a realistic way for most countries to produce feed protein domestically at scale without vast farmland and the right climate. Duckweed, it says, changes the constraints.
Why duckweed, why now?
Duckweed is not new to science, but Virdalis is betting it can be industrialised into a repeatable, scalable ingredient. The plant is tiny, grows fast, and can be cultivated without traditional arable land. Virdalis says Wolffia globosa can double biomass within 24-48 hours and reach 40-45 per cent protein by dry weight.
That growth rate matters because feed manufacturers don’t buy novelty; they buy volume, consistency, and cost curves. If a production system can run year-round and avoid the land-and-water footprint of conventional crops, it potentially turns feed protein from an import into something closer to local manufacturing.
Wavemaker Impact is leaning into that geopolitical angle as much as the climate story. Quentin Vaquette, the venture builder’s founding partner, said the appeal is that duckweed could be produced locally in places that currently have no realistic path to domestic feed-protein supply.
“What’s truly transformative is the geopolitical dimension: this is a protein source that any country can produce domestically, turning feed security from a trade dependency into a sovereign capability,” Vaquette said.
He added that duckweed-based systems could produce comparable protein with as little as 10 per cent of the emissions of conventional methods.
“Built by operators” — and aimed at Southeast Asia
Virdalis was founded by James Aujero, previously an executive at Philippine fintech GCash. While headquartered in Singapore, the firm operates in the Philippines, positioning itself close to regional aquaculture and livestock markets where feed costs and supply shocks ripple quickly into consumer prices.
Aujero framed the company’s ambition as reducing dependence on a few exporting countries rather than replacing any single crop.
“Wolffia is the first protein source that frees nations from that dependency — it can be produced anywhere, at speed,” he said.
The startup says it is building proprietary cultivation and processing systems, plus a data-driven operating platform — language that signals an attempt to run biology like an engineered production stack, not a slow academic programme.
What happens next
With pre-seed funding in place, Virdalis says it is scaling pilot production, hiring technical talent, and pursuing initial commercial agreements with feed manufacturers across Southeast Asia.
For Wavemaker Impact, whose debut fund is US$60 million, the deal fits a familiar pattern: back early-stage climate-tech infrastructure plays with large industrial end-markets. For Virdalis, the hard part starts now: proving that duckweed protein can meet feed-industry requirements on unit economics, safety, consistency, and supply reliability, not just biology.
Also Read: ‘Meat’ing the needs of the alternative protein space in Singapore
If it works, the upside isn’t only a new ingredient. It’s a reconfiguration of where feed protein can be produced, and who gets to control it.
The post Virdalis secures US$700K to scale duckweed protein for animal feed appeared first on e27.