A Vegan Dog Food Raises $14.5M to Build Ozempic for Dogs

Omni raises $14.5M Series A for plant-based dog food

London-based Omni closed an 11 million pound ($14.5M) Series A for its plant-based dog food and supplement portfolio, the company said.

The round was led by IW Capital and Redrice Ventures, with participation from RootBridge Capital, Lever VC, and Digitalis Ventures, the firm behind Mars's Companion Fund. Dragons' Den investor Deborah Meaden increased her stake after first backing the company alongside Steven Bartlett in 2025. The raise reportedly valued Omni at around 30 million pounds ($39.7M), per the Sunday Times.

The growth behind the round is the headline number. Founded in 2020 by Guy Sandelowsky and Shiv Sivakumar, Omni says revenue grew roughly tenfold in 12 months, from about 1 million pounds to close to 13 million pounds in annualized sales. After its 75,000 pound Dragons' Den deal, the company reported a 130% sales jump and 20,000 new customers in three months.

The capital targets three moves: pushing into major UK supermarkets, testing the US market, and developing LeanPaws, a weight-loss supplement first teased last year. Omni's recipes use novel proteins from yeast, algae and pulses, which it says cut emissions 73% versus meat-based food.

Why the Ozempic-for-dogs angle is the real bet

The vegan framing gets the headlines. The weight-management play is where the money is.

LeanPaws is built around fibres and resistant starches that mirror GLP-1 effects, plus pre- and probiotics tuned for fat metabolism. In a placebo-controlled trial Omni cites, 77% of overweight dogs lost weight, 63% saw reduced body-fat composition, and 42% showed fewer begging behaviors. With 46% of UK dogs overweight, the addressable market dwarfs the niche of owners who want a vegan bowl.

This is the smart wedge. Three reasons it matters to operators.

1. Pet obesity is the category with the clearest demand and the weakest incumbents' grip. Weight management today means prescription diets from Hill's, Royal Canin and Purina, sold through vets. A palatable, food-based satiety product sold direct, riding the cultural tailwind of human GLP-1 drugs, attacks that franchise from a different angle. The branding writes itself, and the timing is ideal.

2. Allergen-free, not vegan, is the commercial engine. Omni leans on novel proteins for sensitivities and allergies, and an estimated 1 to 8% of UK dogs have some allergy. Positioning the food as hypoallergenic and functional reaches a far larger buyer than the ethically motivated vegan owner. Veganism is the story; allergen-free and weight control are the purchase drivers.

3. The cap table signals strategic interest. Digitalis Ventures runs Mars's Companion Fund and its own animal-health investing. A Digitalis check in a plant-based, GLP-1-adjacent dog brand is the same pattern visible across animal health right now: incumbents using venture arms to scout the categories they cannot build fast enough internally. It puts Omni on the radar of the largest pet-food company on earth.

The skepticism is warranted. Plant-based dog food remains a hard sell to mainstream owners and to many vets, US regulatory and AAFCO hurdles are real, and a tenfold jump off a 1 million pound base is easier than the next leg. "Ozempic for dogs" is a marketing frame, not an approved drug, and a food-based satiety claim will draw scrutiny if it leans too far toward pharmacology.

Omni's round also lands inside a European low-carbon pet-food wave. Meatly raised 10.4 million pounds weeks earlier for cultivated meat, and Friends & Family, BeneMeat, Enifer and MicroHarvest are all pushing alt-protein pet products. The capital is chasing the same thesis: the protein in the bowl is the industry's biggest cost, margin, and emissions lever.

What decides whether Omni's US and GLP-1 bets land

The raise buys two swings. Both are unproven.

LeanPaws launch and claims: Watch how Omni markets a GLP-1-style benefit without tripping drug-claim rules, and whether the trial data holds up at scale. The regulatory line between functional food and drug claim is exactly where this product lives or dies.

US entry: "Testing the waters" is not a launch. Watch for a real US retail or DTC beachhead, and how plant-based positioning lands with American owners and AAFCO. The UK playbook will not transfer cleanly.

Supermarket distribution: Moving from DTC and Dragons' Den buzz into major UK grocery is the maturity test. Grocery margins and slotting are unforgiving, and shelf velocity will reveal whether demand is real or just earned-media spikes.

The Mars question: With Digitalis in, watch whether a strategic deepens involvement. A follow-on or a commercial tie-up would say an incumbent sees plant-based and pet-obesity as where the category is heading.

Source: Omni Series A via Green Queen