Next-gen ingredients for
people and planet

Shiru is the only artificial intelligence company with a track record of creating and commercializing high-value, all-natural ingredients for consumer products that are better for people and planet.

Groundbreaking products developed from our discovery platform:


OleoPro platform

Plant-based, protein-enhanced technology

  • Juicy, fatty mouthfeel in plant-based meat applications

    Enables 80% reduction in saturated fat vs. coconut oil

    Non-GMO, clean label, and allergen free

    Sustainable alternative to animal fat & unsustainably produced oil

  • Our technology leverages plant-based proteins to create unique protein scaffolds that structure liquid oils. This highly tunable protein technology allows oils to be used in new ways to deliver a range of previously impossible functionality for food and consumer products. The technology can structure an unsaturated, liquid oil, to create a high-performance structured fat that looks and acts like saturated animal fat (lard, tallow, etc.) or solid plant-based fat (coconut oil, palm oil, etc.) while reducing saturated fat by over 80%.

    Applications:

  • Structured fat ingredients for alternative protein products
  • Specialty oil-based spreads
  • Bioactive encapsulation and stabilization

Gelation platform

Gelation agents are crucial in the cooking and baking process and for improving sensory perception. Commonly used gelling agents include methylcellulose, eggs, and thickeners or stabilizers in a variety of applications.

Our gelation platform delivers natural, plant-based protein ingredients that offer improved gelling and binding performance across a range of temperatures and food conditions.

Applications: 

  • Methylcellulose replacement in alternative meat products
  • Egg replacement in bakery products
  • Hydrocolloid replacement for cold binding and water activity control

Bioactives and tastants platform

Bioactives and tastants are compounds that are present in low quantities in foods, but are highly functional in terms of providing flavor, color and nutritional benefits. Commonly found bioactives and tastants in food include sweeteners, umami flavors, iron binding compounds, and antimicrobial compounds. 

Our platform delivers natural, plant-based protein ingredients that can improve the nutritional impact of food, impact the flavor, or help with the shelf life in a variety of end applications.

Applications: 

  • Sweet proteins
  • Bitter blockers 
  • Antimicrobials
  • Bioactives for nutritional enhancement

How we create these game changing ingredients

At the heart of Shiru is Flourish™, our patented discovery platform. Flourish finds the best ingredients nature has to offer, using machine learning and bioinformatics to mine our proprietary database.

  • 1:

    We start with a vast library of hundreds of millions of proteins found in nature.

  • 2:

    Our AI-powered discovery engine, Flourish, identifies natural proteins with specific desired characteristics.

  • 3:

    Our scientists and food technicians quickly validate a list of ingredient candidates that yield performance + producibility.

  • 4:

    Our pilot production facility generates meaningful quantities of our top Flourish identified hits.

  • 5:

    We bring our discoveries to market via direct ingredient sales or development partnerships.

How we work together

After aligning with partners on the functional target, we collaborate in a three-phased engagement to digitally discover, screen for function with high throughput assays, and validate the performance of target proteins in the desired product matrix.

The Flourish cycle takes months to develop entirely new and disruptive ingredient solutions for partners, as opposed to traditional/empirical testing which can take years, resulting only in modest iterations on previous generations of ingredients.

Planning

Digital Search

High Throughput Screening

Validation