Geltor

Geltor is a cellular agriculture company located in San Leandro, California and founded in 2015 by Alex Lorestani and Nick Ouzounov. They make essential proteins, such as collagen and gelatin, using microbes in their own bio-fermentation recombinant protein production facility. They specialize in making, designing, and building proteins that are made to texturize consumer products.

Collume is Geltor's collagen product that is sustainably manufactured in the lab using microbes and biofermentation. The making of Collume uses zero animal inputs and is a low-weight soluble peptide that has tunable anti-aging properties.

Gelor's first product to go on the market was animal-free collagen. Their collagen is grown in the lab through the bio-fermentation of microbes. Geltor claims they can produce collagen with desirable properties for their customers by controlling the proteins and proteins ratios present in their gelatin products.

Geltor grew jellyfish collagen in their lab using microbes with genes extracted from jellyfish cells to make the proteins necessary to make the world first animal-free leather bound book. This was the first leather product made by Geltor, and the leather bound book sold on Ebay for $12,790 on January 22, 2018.

First-ever clean leather-bound book by Geltor

The company only made one leather bound book to demonstrate what is possible with their technology although making leather products out of lab grown collagen may have a future, CEO of Geltor Alex Lorestani, told reporters that "Jellyfish collagen is flexible but firm, like bovine leather, and it can be made in a liquid-like solution to be formed into whatever shape Geltor wants."

On February 1, 2016 Geltor closed out their seed funding round raising $2,300,000. Investors include: Stray Dog Capital, SOSV, New Crop Capital, Fifty Years, FTW Ventures, and Baruch Future Ventures.

On October 25, 2018 Geltor closed their Series A funding round, raising $18.2 million. The round was led by Cultivan Sandbox Ventures.