A San Jose startup has developed a way to create butter without animals or plants — using only carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and heat. “I’ve tasted Savor’s products, and I couldn’t believe I wasn’t eating real butter,” said Bill Gates, who backs the company.
Founded in 2022 by Henrik Bennetsen (CEO), Kathleen Alexander (CTO), and Ian McKay (CSO), Savor is pioneering a thermochemical process that creates fats without agriculture, potentially revolutionizing food production while fighting climate change.
Chemistry, Not Agriculture
Savor’s innovative approach starts with basic elements. The process pulls CO2 from the air and hydrogen from water, then heats and oxidizes them to create fats that function like traditional dairy butter but without the environmental impact.
The technology uses less than a thousandth of the water required for crop-based fat production and releases very few greenhouse gases. Perhaps most importantly, it can operate anywhere, regardless of climate or geopolitical challenges.
Through chemical reactions and the addition of oxygen, the company transforms these basic elements into fatty acids that are then rearranged into triglycerides — the building blocks of fats like butter.
Butter That Performs
Early prototypes have already demonstrated promising results. The company’s butter alternatives have successfully replicated dairy butter’s melting, crystallization, hardness, viscosity, and flavor characteristics.
The fatty acid makeup of Savor’s butter likely differs from traditional sources. “While currently speculative, the fatty acid makeup of Savor’s butter is likely to be different from traditional sources. Dairy butter is composed of a variety of fatty acids… By contrast, the process of creating synthetic butter may yield a more homogenous mixture of molecules,” one analysis noted.
Beyond Butter
Butter is just the beginning. The company aims to produce other types of fats and oils, including palm oil and cocoa butter, using its thermochemical process.
This approach could help address multiple sustainability challenges at once. Bennetsen, Alexander, and McKay founded the startup to offer a solution to industrial fats that could significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate the impacts of climate change.
“Proof of concept of Savor’s chemical fat production platform has already been illustrated through early butter prototypes,” the company has stated. “These prototypes stand out from a taste and functionality perspective, and have been iterated to achieve an improved melting and crystallisation behaviour, hardness, viscosity, flavour, and other important properties.”