Celleste Bio, Mondelēz Unveil Milk Chocolate Bars Made with Cell-Cultured Cocoa Butter

Israeli food biotech company Celleste Bio has unveiled what it’s calling the world’s first milk chocolate bars made with real cocoa butter using cell suspension culture technology, according to a release.

Mondelēz International, which invested in the company in December 2024, produced about a dozen of the milk chocolate bars using the cell-cultured cocoa butter and found that they met its integrity and consumption standards for its products. Celleste is “on track to produce one ton of cocoa butter annually in a 1,000-liter bioreactor from a single bean,” explained Hanne Volpin, chief technical and scientific officer.

Celleste was founded in 2022 and announced this product in October 2025 as the first chocolate-grade cocoa butter made using plant cell culture technology. This latest milestone, making chocolate bars with the product using real-world production standards, demonstrates that Celleste’s cell-cultured cocoa butter functions identically to traditional cocoa butter, delivering the same texture, melt profile and sensory experience, the announcement noted.

Further, the company said, this sets the stage for production scale-up to reach market-ready quantities of the cocoa butter product within the next two years. Celleste also is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) computational modeling to customize melting points and taste experiences of its cocoa butter to meet specific customer demands.