Let’s imagine the following situation: someone is at a party, listening to music, having a few beers, chatting here and there. In one of those conversations, a person – you probably won’t remember who the next day – tells you something about a fungus that can become food.
The next day, from the vague and imprecise memory of a night, an idea emerges, like an epiphany. That idea then becomes a project, which one day reaches NASA. That is, broadly speaking, what happened to Horacio Acerbo, founder of Eternal.
Ethernal: how the project came about
“My original idea was decentralize protein manufacturing. That is, that each person in their home had the possibility of having something like a yogurt maker or a bread maker to produce it“, Explain.
Acerbo’s obsession, a sociologist, plastic artist and technological entrepreneur, was to find an alternative so that no child would lack protein in the first 1,000 days of life, which are central to their development. But, also, the idea was to do it in a way that was sustainable for the earth and sustainable over time.
“I am not a socialist, not by any means, I was a libertarian long before Javier Milei, but I saw that the guys weren’t really eating protein and I felt like I had to do something to be able to contribute,” he explains.
In 2017, with that project in mind, Acerbo went to the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) – where he had already investigated other projects with EnyeTec, his first technology company- they bought the mushroom (Fusarium venenatum) and began to work with their first bioreactor together with INTI and in a small laboratory in Buenos Aires.
For the first two years, the company’s salaries and costs were financed from the profits that Acerbo obtained by “trading”.
The next step was to form a new company, less eclectic and more focused on the project, to go out into the world to seek capital. That’s when Kernel emerged, which later became Eternal, the version that today also includes Lucas Gago (VP of Innovation) and Martín Blasco (Chief Scientific Officer).
Horacio Acerbo, CEO of Eternal
Today, the firm has its commercial office in San Francisco (USA) and London (United Kingdom), a research and development laboratory in Buenos Airesand research centers in Malaga (Spain) and Cape Canaveral (USA).
Ethernal: what does it do
With a team made up of biologists, engineers, chemists, physicists and programmersat Eternal they are working on the development of mycofoods, an ingredient 100% animal freemade from biomass Fusarium Venenatuma mushroom approved for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).
They also use Artificial Intelligence and robotics for automatic experimentation, analysis and optimization, which allows them to simplify the production process, work faster and with a greater level of detail. Thus, by simply subjecting the fungus to different procedures, they can create analogues (replicas) of:
- Cheeses
- Burgers
- Fish
- Chicken breasts
- Smoothies and drinks
- Ice creams
The production of one kilo of mycofood reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 94% compared to the production of beef and 70% in the case of chicken. As well as 17% of the cost of growing media, 80% of energy consumption in the production process and 50% of water consumption.
The prototype developed by Eternal is as big as a electrical appliance, which can be used both in a house like in a spaceshipwhere there are very few resources available.
In fact, Eternal is one of the Four finalists of phase three of the Deep Space Food Challenge, a competition organized by NASA to find New and better food proposals for future space missions.
By subduing the fungus Fusarium Venenatum, Eternal can create different replicas of high-protein food
“When I was working on this project, I met Pablo de León, a friend I hadn’t seen for a while, and he took us with his company to Cape Canaveral. I had made this small machine, thinking of it as a domestic one, but due to these conditions it could be perfectly installed inside the International Space Station (ISS), so we built our prototype and went through the phases,” explains Acerbo.
Not only are mushrooms a high source of protein, they are also ideal for space exploration because they grow very quickly.
Eternal is also a finalist in the XPRIZE Feed the Next Billion competition and in July in Abu Dhabi with some 200 replicas of chicken breasts made from biomass to compete with five other finalists. Acerbo admits that he is a man of many ideas and he himself is surprised by the direction his project has taken.
According to Acerbo, “the Global food distribution chain is not sustainable“But the world of synthetic biology allows us to solve this problem. Just as we did with cows, we can do it with microorganisms, fungi, bacteria and yeasts.”
“I really I was waiting for Samsung or LG to call me to market the machinebut they started calling us from big food companies like Danone either Tyson Foodsand now we are competing to be suppliers of the POT“he concludes.
