KortneyApeel Sciences, a company that creates a natural coating for the exterior of fruits and vegetables, announced a $250 million funding round in which Katy Perry and Oprah are part of. Katy says she got involved after meeting
Perry, who has been a longtime champion of addressing and mitigating the effects of climate change and is also an investor in Impossible Foods (maker of the Impossible Burger), says she got involved after getting a tip from Chris Lyons, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz (the firm helped lead Apeel’s $33 million fundraising back in December 2016). “I met James, and I went to Apeel and toured the offices and the labs and saw the science in real time and was just so blown away I thought it was witchcraft—in the best of ways,” Perry says in a phone call. “This is one of the definitions of sustainability. [Apeel] has so many prongs to it. It makes economies. It gives farmers a chance. It gives us more options as a consumer. It takes produce shipping off of planes and back onto shipping containers, so it lowers our CO2 emissions.” […] But Perry thinks Apeel doesn’t need a fire story on the ‘gram to grow. “They just are the magic,” she says, “and when something is such a solution, you don’t have to push it on people.”
