The Daily Populous Sunday April 19th, 2026 evening edition
Authored by morningstar.com and submitted by sg_plumber

Milestone Solidifies Company's Capabilities to Create Scalable, Commercial Supply of Real Cocoa Butter

TEL AVIV, Israel and NEW YORK, April 15, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Celleste Bio™ unveiled the world's first milk chocolate bars made with real cocoa butter using cell suspension culture technology. This is a critical achievement for the cocoa tech leader in accelerating its capabilities to build a scalable, commercially viable cocoa supply.

Milestone sets Celleste on the path to scale, having its cell cultured cocoa butter market ready by 2027.

The cocoa butter was used by Mondelēz International, Celleste's strategic partner, to create a nearly a dozen chocolate bars that met the integrity and consumption standards for its products.

This milestone demonstrates Celleste's cell cultured ingredients are bio-identical to conventionally grown cocoa - meaning they deliver the same texture, melt profile and sensory experience, and sets the stage for scaling production to market ready quantities within the next two years.

"Celleste launched in 2022 with the mission to secure a sustainable future for the global chocolate industry amidst increasing supply chain pressures of climate change, disease, traceability and geopolitical instability," said Michal Beressi Golomb, CEO, Celleste Bio. "In three years we've made unprecedented progress to meet this formidable scientific challenge. We've validated our ingredients as drop-in replacements, created an operational R&D pilot facility to scale up our volumes and now proven our cocoa butter performs identically to conventional cocoa, clearing the next phase to commercial scale."

Celleste is also poised to change the dynamic of the chocolate market. Its model is designed to leverage AI computational modeling to customize cocoa butter to customer specifications – such as higher melting points and taste experiences – that can allow manufacturers to uplevel their innovation and competitive advantage.

Celleste's Chief Technical and Scientific Officer Hanne Volpin, PhD underscores the environmental upside of using cell cultured technology to supplement traditional growing methods.

"Building a resilient supply chain means being able to produce at commercial volumes while offsetting disruptions caused by climate change, deforestation and resource scarcity," says Volpin. "We are on track to produce 1 ton of cocoa butter annually in a 1000 liter bioreactor from a single bean - which would otherwise require about a hectare of cocoa trees. To that end, we've curated a very robust bank of multiple cocoa bean varietals we can use to grow, test and scale material without ever having to cut down a single tree in the rainforest."

To date, Celleste Bio has raised $5.6 million, including Mondelēz International as a strategic and design partner, along with Supply Change Capital, Trendlines, Barrel Ventures and non-dilutive grants.

Celleste Bio is a food technology company developing cocoa ingredients through proprietary cell suspension culture technology. The company's patented platform produces chocolate-grade cocoa butter that is bio-identical to conventionally sourced cocoa butter, offering a drop-in replacement that preserves the quality and functionality that chocolate makers and consumers depend on. Celleste is committed to building a more resilient, sustainable, and traceable future for chocolate lovers and the industry.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/celleste-bio-unveils-worlds-first-milk-chocolate-bars-made-with-cell-cultured-cocoa-butter-302743203.html

Zero_Burn on April 18th, 2026 at 22:46 UTC »

So we can mass produce the butter part, but we still need the solids to actually make chocolate, right? I'm hoping we get the upgrade in this tech tree to just brew up chocolate wholesale in bioreactors, lol.

p-d-ball on April 18th, 2026 at 22:44 UTC »

If they can produce cacao, it probably wouldn't have the heavy metals that regular chocolate seems to.

Internet-Cryptid on April 18th, 2026 at 22:33 UTC »

Awesome news. I'm a cocoa addict and the prices of cocoa powder have been painful this year. Seeing so many chocolate products replace cocoa butter with palm oil is also awful, hope we can get away from this fake chocolate epidemic!