Irina Miller, Co-Founder and CEO of Daisy Lab

Irina Miller is a New Zealand food-tech entrepreneur and the co-founder and chief executive of Daisy Lab, the Auckland company using precision fermentation to make dairy proteins without cows.

Miller did not come from science. Her background was in business and consulting and her route into food technology was personal before it was professional, she was vegan and a hobby cheesemaker and had encountered precision fermentation while working in the dairy industry, including at Fonterra. The more she understood the technology, training microbes to produce specific proteins, including the proteins found in milk, the more convinced she became that it mattered for New Zealand, a country whose economy leans heavily on dairy exports and whose environmental footprint is shaped by them.

What turned conviction into a company was frustration. Miller watched and waited for someone in New Zealand to build in the space and eventually decided that if it was not happening, she would start it herself, bootstrapped and on the ground here, rather than left to a distant Silicon Valley. She approached molecular biologist Dr Nikki Freed, and the two agreed the cheapest, fastest way to prove the concept was to sponsor a master’s research project. The student they took on, Emily McIsaac, became the third co-founder and Daisy Lab was born in 2021.

Under Miller’s leadership the company moved quickly from idea to evidence: it identified three whey-protein expression systems, produced animal-identical whey protein powder end to end and pushed its fermentation yield past early targets. It attracted grants and angel investment, including a $1.5 million seed round in 2023 backed by Icehouse Ventures and Outset Ventures, and in 2024 won approval from the Environmental Protection Authority to scale up contained production several hundred-fold, a milestone toward supplying dairy proteins as commercial ingredients.

Miller’s framing is what makes her noteworthy. She does not pitch Daisy Lab as an enemy of dairy, but as a way for New Zealand to take part in dairy’s next chapter, using the country’s existing strengths in protein science and dairy processing to make valuable ingredients without relying solely on animals. It is a more nuanced position than the usual “alternative protein versus farming” story and you can read the wider company context in the Daisy Lab story and the technology in What is precision fermentation?.

Sources: Idealog · University of Auckland · Vegconomist