Day 8

**Product and the concrete problem it solves.** Day 8 is developing a food ingredient rather than a branded consumer food. Its target is Rubisco, the protein that performs carbon fixation in green leaves and is often described as one of the most abundant proteins on Earth. Rubisco has an attractive nutritional and formulation profile: public reporting describes it as a complete protein containing all nine essential amino acids, with binding, emulsifying, foaming, and gelling functionality comparable to important animal-derived ingredients. The problem is that the protein is trapped inside leaf tissue alongside chlorophyll, cellulose, polyphenols, and other compounds that create green colour, unwanted flavour, and processing difficulty. Day 8’s answer is to use leaves that are already produced but are not the harvested crop, with banana leaves a publicly discussed feedstock and a broader list of potential crops under evaluation. This addresses two bottlenecks at once: plant-based foods need better-tasting and more functional protein, while agriculture creates large volumes of biomass that are often left in fields, diverted to low-value uses, or treated as waste. The company is therefore pursuing a circular ingredient platform whose value depends on converting an abundant side stream into a repeatable food-grade input.

**Core technology and how it works.** The exact Day 8 extraction sequence is proprietary, and the founders have deliberately not disclosed every unit operation. The public technical account is still specific enough to identify the engineering challenge. Because Rubisco is soluble, the process begins by separating liquid from fibrous leaf material; Day 8 has said it does not use solvents and is targeting a clean-label ingredient. It must then remove chlorophyll and associated colour and odour while protecting the protein’s native functionality. Conventional heat or harsh chemical treatment can denature Rubisco, leaving a nutritionally intact product that no longer performs as an emulsifier, foaming agent, or binder. Day 8’s process is consequently a selective, low-intervention separation and purification problem followed by concentration, drying, and formulation into a stable powder. The company’s differentiation is not a new protein sequence but the economics and process control needed to recover a useful ingredient from low-cost, variable biomass. That requires rapid handling after harvest, feedstock qualification, control of moisture and microbial load, removal of pigments and antinutritional compounds, consistent protein purity, and preservation of taste and functionality through scale-up. The public record establishes a working extraction approach and pilot activity, but not independently audited yield, purity, energy use, or life-cycle performance.

**Market, customers, and go-to-market.** Day 8 is targeting business customers that formulate foods, not a direct-to-consumer channel. Its publicly described applications include plant-based meat, egg-replacement products, baked goods, and sports nutrition, with ingredients manufacturers also identified as potential buyers. The commercial pitch is that a neutral-tasting, complete protein with useful texture functionality could improve repeat purchase of plant-based products while reducing dependence on soy, pea, chickpea, egg, whey, and synthetic texturizers such as methylcellulose. The proposed route to market is to work with food manufacturers and ingredient suppliers, beginning in the United States and later addressing Europe. That sequencing reflects regulatory timing: FoodNavigator reported that Day 8 expected a novel production process to require pre-market food-safety work, and the company’s earlier public goal was to bring an initial product to market by the end of 2026. A U.S.-first plan also benefits from regulatory precedent created by other Rubisco companies, although another company’s FDA status does not automatically authorize Day 8’s material or process. The business model is likely to combine technical collaboration, pilot samples, and eventual ingredient supply or licensing. Commercial diligence should test whether crop residue can be collected near processing sites, whether food makers will pay for functionality rather than protein alone, and whether the company can secure reliable offtake before building expensive manufacturing capacity.

**Traction, funding, and third-party validation.** Day 8 emerged from stealth in 2024 with reported pre-seed funding of $750,000 from The Kitchen FoodTech Hub, the Strauss Group-backed Israeli food-tech incubator. CTech reported the round as completed in July 2023, while AgFunderNews described the company as a 2023 venture developing a more economical route to Rubisco from discarded leaves. The Israel Innovation Authority’s public company page lists Day 8 as an Israeli agritech company established in 2023, in R&D stage, with seven employees in that record, and identifies a 2023 Technological Incubators route and a 2024 Startup Fund route. Earlier company profiles and CTech reported five employees, so the appropriate current database value is a small range rather than a falsely precise count. Subsequent ecosystem signals include a Verissimo Ventures portfolio listing, participation in Israel’s food-tech community, a 2025 Leading Women in Foodtech recognition for CTO Dana Marom, and company posts describing a pilot facility and manufacturing work. Those are useful validation signals, but they are not the same as a disclosed commercial launch, recurring revenue, regulatory clearance, or a signed production contract. No reliable public source reviewed here establishes total funding beyond the reported $750,000 pre-seed, customer revenue, patent grants, or a completed U.S. regulatory submission. The strongest evidence today is that a credible incubator, government innovation program, food-tech investors, and specialist trade publications all recognize a real technical program with an active team.

**Founders and team background.** Day 8 was founded in 2023 by Daniel Rejzner and Dana Marom. Rejzner is the CEO and a serial consumer-packaged-goods entrepreneur. AgFunderNews reported that he previously co-founded Zollo, a price-transparency application, and Ourcart, a shopper-insight platform; CTech described his experience leading a retail-technology company through four years of double-digit revenue growth across 15 markets and sales to tier-one consumer brands. That background is relevant because ingredient ventures fail as often on adoption and repeat purchase as on laboratory performance. Marom is the CTO and brings more than 20 years of food-industry and biotech experience, including leadership roles in Israel and China, an executive role at a major soy-protein manufacturer, and participation in a medical-cannabis company that reached an IPO, according to the Modern Agriculture Foundation. Her profile emphasizes food proteins, process scale-up, engineering, and international relationships. The wider public team footprint includes food scientists and R&D personnel working from The Kitchen hub in Rehovot, with job postings seeking expertise in protein extraction, food applications, scientific documentation, and transition from laboratory prototypes to production. The pairing is unusually complementary for this stage: Rejzner contributes CPG commercialization and customer intuition, while Marom contributes protein-processing and industrial execution. The open question is whether a small team can add process engineering, quality, regulatory, supply-chain, and sales capacity fast enough for pilot-to-production conversion.

**Competitive dynamics.** Day 8 faces competition from both direct Rubisco developers and established ingredient systems. Plantible Foods is a direct category competitor using duckweed grown in controlled aquafarms and has become an important regulatory and commercialization reference for isolated Rubisco. Leaft Foods extracts Rubisco from alfalfa and has advanced toward commercial production and food applications. Fudi Protein is pursuing alfalfa-derived Rubisco with a circular co-product model. Brevel and other Israeli alternative-protein companies compete for food-manufacturer budgets with microalgae and other sustainable proteins, while ADM, Ingredion, Kerry, and established protein suppliers can bundle familiar soy, pea, egg, whey, and texturizing ingredients with formulation support and global distribution. Day 8’s possible edge is feedstock economics: discarded leaves can avoid the cost of planting and harvesting a dedicated protein crop, and the banana-leaf proposition may use a stream with little competing demand. Its process may also be more attractive to manufacturers if it delivers a neutral powder without requiring a new chemistry or a major reformulation. Those advantages remain conditional. Crop residue is dispersed, seasonal, perishable, and variable; competing Rubisco companies may secure better feedstock networks or earlier regulatory approvals; and ingredient incumbents can respond with blends, acquisitions, or pricing. The durable moat must therefore combine process know-how, validated functionality, supply agreements, regulatory dossiers, and customer-specific formulations rather than relying on the headline abundance of Rubisco.

**Defense, security, and resilience dual-use relevance.** Day 8’s strategic relevance is food-system resilience rather than a fielded defense capability. The core technology could support commercial food production and resilience-sensitive deployment because it seeks to create protein from agricultural biomass without requiring additional dedicated cropland, and because its feedstock model could diversify supply away from a narrow set of commodity protein crops. In a disruption scenario, locally or regionally processed crop side streams could provide an additional ingredient pathway for institutional food, emergency nutrition, humanitarian operations, or military provisioning, subject to safety approval, logistics, and adequate processing capacity. The same low-input, circular approach could reduce pressure on land, water, and fertilizer systems that are exposed to climate stress, conflict-related transport interruptions, and export restrictions. This is a credible dual-use pathway in the resilience sense, but it must not be confused with defense procurement. No public source reviewed here discloses an Israeli Ministry of Defense program, military customer, defense contract, security certification, or fielded military ration application. The company’s current customers and go-to-market are food manufacturers and ingredient suppliers. The strategic case is strongest if Day 8 demonstrates that its process can be deployed near diverse agricultural regions, maintain food-grade quality under variable conditions, and produce a shelf-stable ingredient at competitive cost. Until then, dual-use value is a plausible food-security option supported by the platform’s feedstock logic, not a proven defense revenue stream.

**Growth stage, trajectory, and key diligence risks.** Day 8 is best classified as early stage: it has a real technical proposition, a reported pre-seed round, incubator and government ecosystem support, a small team, and pilot-facility activity, but public evidence does not yet show commercial-scale production or regulatory clearance. The trajectory is attractive if the company can move from laboratory extraction to a reliable manufacturing recipe and then into customer-qualified ingredients. The main diligence points are: (1) **Process economics:** independently measure protein recovery, purity, yield per tonne of leaves, water and energy use, drying cost, and waste treatment. (2) **Feedstock logistics:** verify crop access, seasonality, transport radius, microbial control, and whether banana leaves or other residues remain economical after collection. (3) **Product performance:** compare taste, colour, solubility, digestibility, allergen profile, and binding or foaming function against soy, pea, egg, whey, methylcellulose, and direct Rubisco competitors. (4) **Regulatory path:** establish the required U.S. safety submission, evidence package, timeline, and later European novel-food route. (5) **Scale-up and capital:** determine whether the pilot facility is company-owned, leased, or partner-operated, and quantify the next financing required for demonstration and commercial plants. (6) **Customer conversion:** seek named paid pilots, repeat formulation work, letters of intent, or offtake agreements rather than relying on conference exposure. (7) **IP and defensibility:** clarify patents, trade secrets, freedom to operate, and protection around feedstock preparation and pigment removal. The upside is a differentiated circular-protein platform; the risk is that attractive laboratory functionality does not survive industrial economics or regulation.