Lasso, a pioneering food-tech startup reimagining how food textures are created, has raised $6.5 million in seed funding led by Rhapsody Venture Partners, with participation from Safar Partners and Claridge Venture Partners. The company, founded by Mike Messersmith, is on a mission to commercialize its revolutionary SpinTech platform - a proprietary system that uses physics, not additives, to create structured, high-protein foods that are clean-label, sustainable, and scalable.

Turning Research Into Real-World Manufacturing

Lasso’s story began with deep research into the physical properties of food materials and how to re-engineer them without chemicals or heavy processing. Instead of relying on extrusion or binding agents, the team built SpinTech, a platform that uses centrifugal force to “spin” fibers and proteins into natural, muscle-like textures. The result is a clean, repeatable way to produce next-gen ingredients for plant-based meat, functional snacks, and high-protein foods - all with fewer additives and lower energy costs.

From Harvard-Backed Roots to Industrial Scale

Emerging from academic and industry collaboration, Lasso has quietly built one of the most promising technologies in modern food production. Its rebrand from Tender Food to Lasso marks a pivotal shift - from producing single products to building a platform company that enables entire categories. The new funding will expand production capacity, launch pilot partnerships with major food manufacturers, and develop new consumer-ready lines that showcase SpinTech’s capabilities.

And this is where the magic lies for founders watching from the sidelines.

What Lasso did differently wasn’t just building better tech - it engineered predictability. In deep-tech startups, the path to defensibility isn’t in patents alone but in how reliably you can reproduce your results at industrial scale. When you can make the same quality output ten thousand times without variation, you stop being a risky innovation and start becoming infrastructure. That’s the invisible bridge every frontier founder must build - moving from product innovation to process integrity.

This distinction - between “innovation” and “industrialization” - is often what determines whether investors see you as an exciting experiment or a scalable business. Lasso’s seed round signals not just investor belief in a concept, but confidence in a process that can be licensed, repeated, and trusted by manufacturers globally. It’s the difference between creating food and creating the machine that creates food - and that’s where category kings are born.

A Platform Built for Global Food Manufacturers

With this round, Lasso plans to license its SpinTech technology to global food and ingredient producers. The company’s hardware platform allows manufacturers to achieve custom food textures with greater precision and less waste, opening the door to innovations in everything from plant proteins to snacks and pet food. The system uses less heat and energy, requires no binders, and produces higher yields - an irresistible value proposition for companies looking to cut costs while improving nutritional quality.

The combination of process efficiency and natural ingredient integrity puts Lasso at the forefront of the clean-label movement - a market that’s expected to exceed $64 billion by 2030. Unlike traditional extrusion systems, SpinTech delivers both sustainability and scalability, key factors for major CPG companies looking to reinvent their supply chains.

Founder Vision Meets Market Momentum

Mike Messersmith’s leadership reflects a rare blend of scientific precision and market pragmatism. Having spent years understanding both the engineering and consumer sides of food innovation, his approach focuses on building a technology that serves as a foundation for an ecosystem, not just a brand. Investors took notice of that clarity - a focus on becoming a technology enabler rather than another D2C player in the crowded alt-protein space.

That mindset - solving the bottleneck for others instead of competing head-on - is a strategic play many founders overlook. When you position yourself as the “picks and shovels” provider for an industry undergoing transformation, you benefit from every company’s success, not just your own. Lasso’s technology, therefore, doesn’t just power one brand; it can power an entire generation of cleaner, smarter food companies.

Scaling a New Definition of Food Manufacturing

The $6.5 million infusion will be used to expand Lasso’s pilot facilities, accelerate customer collaborations, and scale production lines. The company’s next milestones include commercial deployments of SpinTech equipment, establishing co-manufacturing partnerships, and launching pilot food products that demonstrate the system’s versatility.

As more investors lean toward sustainable, science-based solutions in food, Lasso’s combination of clean-label efficiency and scalable physics-based production offers a compelling blueprint. This funding marks the start of a broader shift - one where food innovation is less about replacing meat and more about replacing inefficient manufacturing systems.

The company’s name says it all: Lasso - capturing the essence of food science and technology, pulling complex ideas into a unified, controllable process. If successful, Lasso won’t just make better food - it will redefine how food is made.