Hampton Creek, a San Francisco-based startup developing plant-based replacements for eggs, has raised its biggest round of funding yet.

Today, the company announced that it is taking $23 million in a series B round led by Li Ka-Shing's Horizon Ventures. Li is Asia's richest man, with a net worth of $29.2 billion, according to Bloomberg's Billionaire Index.

Josh Tetrick, CEO of Hampton Creek, told us he's thrilled to have Li as an investor. There were plenty of suitors, but Tetrick was attracted to Li because of his connections in Asia.

"Money matters, but we'll have a platform to take what we’ve done and extend it out," says Tetrick. He notes that "38% of egg production is in China. It's a massive market, growing every day. Horizons has experience and connections into the Asian environment."

Hampton Creek makes egg-replacement products based on plants. It sells to consumers and enterprises.

Tetrick says Hampton Creek is working with two Fortune 500 companies to take eggs out of baked goods. It has deals with four other Fortune 500 companies to replace traditional mayonnaise with Hampton Creek's eggless mayo.

Hampton Creek's plant-based mayonnaise tastes pretty much the same, if not better than traditional mayo. (See our blind taste test video here.) Some Whole Foods are using it in chicken salad instead of mayo. And some fast food chains will start using Hampton Creek mayo on sandwiches.

"Our cost structure is our advantage," says Tetrick. "We're 48% more cost effective. The cost of eggs comes from feeding chickens. Unless egg makers are willing to lose money, they don’t have a structure to compete with us. Unless they come up with a way to not feed the chickens."

For consumers, Hampton Creek sells mayo directly in grocery stores. Right now it's only in a few stores, but Tetrick hinted that it would be in more stores in the near future. It also sells a plant-based version of cookie dough that's quite tasty. That will be in stores in a few months.

One of the biggest things Hampton Creek is working on is a plant-based replacement for scrambled eggs. Tetrick is optimistic those will be done by the end of the year.

While that would be a big breakthrough, the goal isn't necessarily to replace eggs you eat for breakfast. It's to cut back on the use of eggs that work their way into every other product.

Says Tetrick, "1.8 trillion eggs get into all these different spots" — Baked goods, fast food, chicken salad, and so on.

The chickens that make the 1.8 trillion eggs aren't treated so well. As Tetrick previously explained to us the, "eggs are coming from rusty cages with chickens sh**ing all over each other."

Tetrick says he will use the new funds for expansion. It's going to get a new testing facility, triple its sales staff, and expand the R&D team.

Tetrick says the hope is that in the next year, or year and half it won't "sound too delirious when we say the conventional egg isn’t going to be around anymore. "



WATCH THIS: We Tried Hampton Creek's Synthetic Eggs



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Here's the full release on the funding: