Spirits and technology startup Endless West announced it has raised $60 million in Series C funding led by Level One Fund and funds managed by UBS O’Connor, bringing its total investment to date to $95 million. Endless West’s latest round follows a string of large funding rounds in the rapidly-growing Food Technology space.
Founded in 2015 by scientists Alec Lee and Mardonn Chua, Endless West uses a revolutionary, technology-driven process to create molecular spirits. Its products have dramatically-improved sustainability and scalability to mitigate many of the industry’s supply chain challenges. Endless West is the first company to launch this technology in spirits, identifying key flavor and aroma molecules (or notes), then extracting them for use from more efficient sources in nature — including plants, fruits and yeasts. The brand’s products have already won 39 medals in wine and spirits competitions, including most recently a Gold Medal with 91 Points in the 2021 London Spirits Competition for Glyph Spice, a successor to Glyph Original which launched in 2018. Glyph Spice was awarded the 5th highest score in the whiskey category of all whiskeys submitted this year out of over 130 that qualified for an award.
Endless West’s most recent funding brings the company to $95 million in equity financing, and will be used primarily to launch its newest B2B platform, Blank Collective, domestically and internationally. Blank Collective offers creative, product development, and production services for partners looking to launch their own new brands or to improve margins, ingredient quality, and scalability of existing brands. Through Blank Collective, Endless West makes its molecular process available to external parties for the first time, so partners no longer have to make difficult trade-offs between the price, quality, and availability of the spirits available for their brands. Blank Collective can help launch a new product in a matter of weeks, and can reformulate existing products in a matter of months to match or improve on the quality at a greatly reduced price of the original ingredient spirits.
“Since we founded the company we’ve been pushing the boundaries of what people thought was possible in the wine and spirits industry,” said Alec Lee, co-founder & CEO of Endless West, in a press release. “I’m thrilled to announce this next round of funding that will help us take our incredible technology to the world and make it available for others looking to create their own great products.”
“This funding round accelerates Endless West’s mission to become the alcohol industry’s leading supply hub, and further supports the company’s molecular production process in its role as an inevitable technology that is already yielding impressive cost, speed, and environmental benefits for a $1.5 trillion global market.” said James Stewart, Partner at Level One Fund.
Endless West’s products can be found in major bars and restaurants across the U.S., and at https://shop.endlesswest.com.