Gates’ Investment in Startup Firm Is Not Related to Baby Formula Shortage
Baby Formula,Bill Gates,Facts And Fact Checking
A fund backed by Bill Gates has invested in a startup working to develop lab-manufactured breast milk, but it won’t reach the market for several years. Yet, social media posts make baseless claims that Gates is behind the current baby formula shortage — which stems from supply-chain issues and the shutdown at a major manufacturing plant.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a fund backed by Bill Gates that invests in climate-friendly technologies, in 2020 led a $3.5 million round of financing for BIOMILQ, a startup working on reproducing human breast milk using mammary cells.
The company’s product hasn’t yet made it to market — a June 2021 blog post noted that “we’re only in our first trimester.”
But the two-year-old investment is being cited in social media posts to make unfounded claims that Gates engineered the current baby formula shortage because he is invested in a rival product.
The shortage is actually due to supply-chain constraints exacerbated by a major manufacturer’s recall and plant shutdown, as we’ve reported, and there’s no evidence Gates or Breakthrough Energy Ventures is related to it.
Breakthrough “invested in BIOMILQ as a low-carbon alternative to dairy production,” a company spokesperson told FactCheck.org in an email. The claim that the fund is behind the formula shortage “is false,” she said.
