Food tech company Voyage Foods raised a $36 million Series A round co-led by UBS O'Connor and Level One Fund, the company's CEO and founder Adam Maxwell told Axios.

Why it's important: The food technology company is pioneering a new approach for creating sustainable food alternatives by taking a widely available, environmentally-friendly raw ingredient and turning it into a popular food item.

Details: Proceeds will be used to scale manufacturing, research and development, sales and marketing.

Between the lines: Voyage Foods isn't just solving the problem of sustainability, according to Maxwell, it's also ensuring that affordable versions of certain food items will be available for future generations.

Of note: The CEO got the idea for Voyage Foods while working at Endless West, where he helped create (on a molecular level) whiskeys without the barrel aging process, and wines that didn't come from grapes.

What's next: The company's first product will be a peanut butter spread that doesn't come from peanuts, which will be launched in a month.

The bottom line: It's about "decoupling food from the source material by making chocolate without the cow or coffee without the arabica beans," Maxwell said.