Impossible Foods

Impossible Foods is a plant-based meat company founded in July 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, a biochemistry professor who left his position at the Stanford University School of Medicine to pursue the idea after an 18-month sabbatical spent thinking about how to reduce animal agriculture's environmental footprint. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, the company develops meat, pork, chicken and sausage products from plants, using genetically engineered yeast to produce heme (leghemoglobin) as the ingredient behind its "bleeding" plant-based burgers.

The Impossible Burger launched in restaurants in 2016 and reached grocery stores in 2019, and the company's products are now sold in more than 30,000 retail stores and 45,000 foodservice locations across the U.S. Impossible Foods has raised close to $2 billion in disclosed venture funding since 2011, with its most recent primary round — a $500 million Series H in November 2021 — reportedly valuing the company at around $7 billion, down from an estimated $10 billion valuation once discussed in connection with a potential SPAC merger that never materialized.

Secondary-market pricing has since fallen sharply: as of mid-2026, Forge Global's derived price of $1.51 per share implied a valuation of roughly $427 million. On January 30, 2026, longtime CEO Peter McGuinness stepped down after nearly four years leading the company, with day-to-day operations handed to a three-person executive leadership team rather than a single successor CEO; McGuinness remains on the board. The company says it reached the No. 2 position in U.S. plant-based retail market share under his leadership.