We believe human biology holds the answers

Our mission is to unlock our bodies’ innate power and scale it with our proprietary precision fermentation platform. We believe that access to advanced and sustainable nutrition creates a balance of health for individuals, society, and the planet.

Meet the Team

Our Experience

A person holds a small plant sprout in a mound of soil within their cupped hands.

2019

How We Began

Founded on the premise that nutrition could be smarter, Helaina begins its work to recreate the most functional proteins for human health, starting with lactoferrin.

2021

From R&D to Reality

With a $20M Series A, we accelerate our research, building out our proprietary tech stack and proving our ability to produce human proteins outside the body.

A close-up shot of a person's hands, wearing blue gloves, adjusting a slide on the stage of a laboratory microscope.

Laura Katz in a white lab coat and safety glasses.

2024

Scaling the Breakthrough

A $45M Series B fuels our transition from an R&D company to a commercial enterprise, preparing to bring our innovation to a global market.

2025

The Future, Delivered

We achieve metric-ton scale manufacturing of effera®, launching in multiple consumer products and marking a new era for precision fermentation and human nutrition.

Two people walk away from the viewer down a long, curved, and futuristic-looking hallway with bright blue and purple neon lights.

Our Mission

Empowering Health Through Innovation

The spark for Helaina came from an unexpected place: a podcast about the black market for breast milk. Our founder, Laura Katz, realized that everyone from athletes to new parents were going to extraordinary lengths to access the powerful bioactive proteins found in human milk.

She saw not a problem, but a question: what if we could use technology to recreate these vital nutrients, making them safe, accessible, and available to all? Helaina was founded to answer that question.

We’ve raised more than $83M from leading investors.

Meet Laura Katz

Innovator in Food Science and Founder of Helaina

Laura Katz is a food scientist who has been featured in Forbes' 30 Under 30 for her work in redefining the future of nutrition. Before founding Helaina, she developed innovative products for some of the nation's most recognized food brands.

Laura's insight that precision fermentation could be used not just to imitate, but to create biologically-aligned nutrients, is the driving force behind Helaina's mission.

Our Team

We are an enthusiastic, diverse team of the best and brightest scientists, engineers, and business professionals, united by a single belief: that the future of nutrition is human-centric.