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.

CNN, in a report earlier this month, said BIOMILQ is at least three years away from commercial availability.

Gates is chair of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which counts high-profile investors Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Michael Bloomberg among its board members. The fund is part of Breakthrough Energy, which funds technologies with the goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

A frequent target of conspiracy theories, Gates is again being falsely blamed for a national crisis.

One tweet said...

Read Full Story: https://www.factcheck.org/2022/05/gates-investment-in-startup-firm-is-not-rel...