Innovative food tech company Savor has launched the world’s first butter made out of carbon.
The company, backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, was able to achieve this technological advancement by molecularly constructing fat out of carbon dioxide (CO₂), green hydrogen (GH₂), and methane (CH₄).
This revolutionary product aims to answer the growing need for sustainable food chain solutions that offer a reliable alternative to agriculture-dependent oils.
As Kathleen Alexander, co-founder and CEO of Savor, explained, the company was founded to discover the most sustainable way to feed humanity.
According to her, to be truly effective, these sustainable solutions need to tackle not only the carbon footprint, but they also have to be craveable, approachable, and affordable.
Commenting on Savor’s work, Bill Gates wrote on his blog, “The process doesn’t release any greenhouse gases, and it uses no farmland and less than a thousandth of the water that traditional agriculture does. And most important, it tastes really good—like the real thing, because chemically it is.”
He added, “The big challenge is to drive down the price so that products like Savor’s become affordable to the masses—either the same cost as animal fats or less.”
Savor’s 25,000-square-foot pilot facility in Batavia, Illinois, called SavorWorks1, serves as the production center for the novel carbon-based butter.
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The company’s CO2-source agnostic technology uses methane- and carbon dioxide-derived inputs from numerous origins to produce a wide range of fats, like palm oil, milkfat, and cocoa butter, with an ambition to tap into more fats in the future.
Since its first run in 2024, Savor has been growing its operational capacity, looking to scale to a production rate of 100 kg per week by the middle of 2025.
Its cutting-edge butter product has already been adopted by many Michelin-star restaurants and leading figures from the food industry, signaling a strong interest and demand for more of these alternative goods.
To be able to match this increasing butter and fats demand, Savor is currently designing its first commercial production facility, projected to come online in 2027 and beyond.
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