Alec’s Ice Cream Secures $11 Million Series A Funding To Support The Explosion Of Culture Cup And Transition Regenerative Dairy Farms

Alec’s Ice Cream Culture Cup

Alec’s Ice Cream

Going the extra mile to source the best ingredients possible behind a brand that resonates and regenerates is going to sell.

Alec’s Ice Cream, the rising A2 dairy, regenerative ice cream brand, reveals to me today that it has raised $11 million in its Series A raise led by Imaginary Ventures.

Founder and CEO Alec Jaffe, a former college football player who remembers making ice cream himself as a kid, is now in the most formative stages of turning a charming startup brand into this generation’s most beloved ice cream company.

Alec’s stood out when it introduced itself with indulgent pints in 2021. Steady growth started to skyrocket when Culture Cups, the single-serve novelty with more functional elements, launched in early 2025, beginning a new defining chapter of the business that investors had a hard time ignoring.

“Now we’re taking that organic groundswell excitement and putting some fuel behind it,” Jaffe tells me.

Steadfast in his mission of sourcing the highest quality A2 dairy and regenerative ingredients, Jaffe goes way beyond making a delicious singular product, but shows how our choices in the way we utilize our food system can create lasting change on the ground.

He adds, “I want to show that you can build a brand that can be distributed in thousands of stores and become a leading player in the category while also building up your supply chain by following mission-aligned values.”

A Brand That Resonates

Alec’s Ice Cream’s business catapulted with the rollout of Culture Cup, the cups of grassfed A2 dairy-based gut-healthy ice cream that’s low sugar and about half the calories of the pints per serving, all topped with its signature chocolate shell.

Somehow, the Culture Cup, in flavors like Peanut Butter Cup and Chocolate Covered Strawberry, tastes far from a health-conscious dessert. Alec’s shows what it means to be both, also a treat that legitimately satisfies. No longer is Alec’s known just for its free-spirited pints, but its expanded presence throughout the frozen dessert set increases brand value across the board.

“Culture Cups were instantly selling out across the country,” Jaffe says. “They’re additive to your daily wellness routine, while the pints give you that permission to really indulge.”

The Culture Cup dives deeper into Alec’s Ice Cream’s overall narrative around gut health and rewrites an expired narrative on dairy. “People are starting to pick up on having the same ingredient standards in your ice cream that you would for other animal-based products,” Jaffe says. “Dairy was trending in a flat to negative direction for a while. But this year it’s just taken off and dairy is the coolest thing again.”

Grassfed, organic A2 dairy, which is easier on the belly, is at the core of all Alec’s products, but the Culture Cup includes added raw and live pre- and probiotics. “Prebiotics lay the groundwork for the probiotics to have a healthy environment and have the fuel to be that active, healthy bacteria in your system,” Jaffe explains.

Culture Cups have proven to resonate among demographics and occasion. “People are having them as an afternoon snack,” Jaffe says. “The wide-ranging span from grandparents to moms wanting a little treat for their kids has been the biggest pleasant surprise.”

The business, which now includes 14 flavors of pints (including a new permanent Pistachio Crunch collaboration with Graza olive oil) and five flavors of Culture Cup, and more on the way, is now tripling orders from last year, according to Jaffe. Alec’s is capitalizing on the tangible momentum and will double down on its marketing efforts.

The overall operations of Alec’s will now feel some relief from the new raise, even though it now has a wide open road to conquer the ice cream category ahead. “What Alec did in a crowded category is incredibly admirable. It led him to have the right to build something like Culture Cup,” Logan Langberg, Partner at Imaginary Ventures, tells me about his investment. “I can see a billion dollar-revenue business.”

A Brand That Sells

Langberg noticed the explosion of Culture Cup on TikTok, leading him to reach out to Jaffe, ultimately leading Imaginary to contribute the majority of this funding round. Langberg is also now a Board member of Alec’s Ice Cream.

Alec’s previously raised a total of $4 million before this round, which primarily went to kickstarting operations after taking over a shut down factory and nailing down the brand new supply chain Jaffe created.

Now, the brand has proven it has staying power, fitting into Imaginary’s goal of “finding brands that are really touching pop culture, the zeitgeist, and have emotion and stimulate real desire,” as Langberg puts it. “We had a very specific thesis on new-age, healthier dessert options.” Alec’s now sits in a portfolio that ranges from beauty giant Glossier and Kim Kardashian’s Skims to Molly Baz’s Ayoh! sauces and Tom Holland’s Bero NA beer.

“We’re doing so much from a product and mission standpoint,” says Jaffe. “Imaginary is going to be really helpful at elevating that messaging.”

Culture Cup is an inflection point for Alec’s that was hard even for the average consumer to ignore. This new funding will help keep them stocked on store shelves. “They were sold out at almost every door that we could find–an immediate understanding that the proof of concept is working,” Langberg says. “The format of single-serve is really innovative. You don’t see that in this space…you’re not binging like you are with a lot of these other frozen desserts.”

Those consumer desires are influencing highly sought-after capital. “There is a massive macro shift with wellness,” Langberg tells me. “Changes in diets, ways of living…it’s why some of the most recent investments from Imaginary have been in food and beverage.”

Alec’s also aligned with Great Circle Ventures, which has more of a focus on consumer brands that have a mission to create environmental change through food. Great Circle contributed to the previous funding round, right before the launch of Culture Cup. “Our conviction was so high, it didn’t make sense for us to wait,” Great Circle founder Jacob Afriat tells me. “You turn the label and see it’s good for your gut, but at the same time, it’s good for the planet and it’s still indulgent. It just makes a ton of sense.”

Investors’ attractions to Alec’s are a reflection of the multi-faceted business Jaffe has created that’s deeply resonating with everyday shoppers. “Sometimes consumers are just attracted to the brand. It could be that they’re excited about the A2 only, or just about the sustainability angle. It doesn’t matter,” Afriat says. “At the end of the day, people want more of it.”

A Brand That Regenerates

The business model that Jaffe created with Alec’s Ice Cream is an example of how the way in which we grow our food can be the ultimate vessel to fundamentally change our planet. If regenerative agriculture were widely implemented, we could see significant positive impact in ecosystem functions. It takes small steps, like what Alec’s is doing, to scale it.

Alec’s sources Fair Trade, Carbon Neutral, Regenerative Organic Certified ingredients like unrefined cane sugar. But what these new funds are also contributing to are helping farmers transition conventional farms to ones that implement regenerative practices.

Since growing to need so much dairy, Jaffe needed to find farms that fit his high criteria for organic, grass-fed, regenerative A2 dairy. When he couldn’t find them, he, figuratively, made it himself, creating the market so that he could encourage farmers to implement those practices and sell their dairy to him.

Now, those farms, four in total, are Verified Regenerative by Land to Market, which measures soil data primarily based on grazing operations. Every product with the Land to Market seal has had soil data from the farm verified through the Savory Institute’s Ecological Outcome Verification process. “Many consumers only see the tip of the iceberg. Land To Market verifies every step of the supply chain,” CEO Felipe Uriose, who is also an agronomist, tells me. “[The verification] is a tool to give farmers more information about their land so they can make better decisions…increasing the profitability of these rural economies.”

Alec’s doesn’t source dairy from a generic dairy supplier, but directly from these farms who are creating a net positive outcome by sustainably grazing cattle. When you buy any Alec’s Ice Cream product, this is where much of your money is going. Increasing demand is one aspect of regenerative agriculture that the consumer can play an active role in.

Land to Market’s program assists farms with holistic grazing plans to avoid overgrazing, without being fed grains, for the ultimate outcome of better soil health. “You’re moving the cows around on pasture and not allowing them to eat the grass down to the root,” Jaffe explains. “Once you do that, the grass can get deep-rooted and you can create that carbon sink effect in the soil.” Sequestering carbon from the atmosphere is one significant benefit of regenerative agriculture.

Confinement, except in inclement weather, is prohibited on Land to Market’s verified farms. These farms require yearly verifications showing positive improvement in soil function. ”The land shows they are sequestering more carbon, they are retaining more water, they are increasing biodiversity, there are community dynamics among microorganisms and all the fauna,” Urioste says. “We’re verifying what the land is telling us.”

And at the end of the day, we get to enjoy the most supreme dairy, experiencing the difference in every scoop of Alec’s Ice Cream. “If we have healthy plants that are producing more leaves,” Urioste says, “the animal is eating healthier food…healthy grass, healthy animals, healthy production–-of course it’s going to taste better.”

About 10 million acres of land around the world are Verified Regenerative by Land to Market and about 100 brands source ingredients, from beef to dairy, from these farms.

Urioste, Afriat and Langberg each share the same sentiment about Alec’s that their partnerships were an obvious choice. Afriat says, “If we see a successful brand like this, it’s going to encourage new brands to launch in this sector.” Leading by example is necessary encouragement for more farmers to adopt regenerative practices.

Jaffe takes deep pride in the pinnacle of quality standards he holds for his products and the mission of his brand. “It is something that we need to do if we want to be able to source this kind of dairy,” Jaffe says. “If you’re not seeing it out in the world, you can either just accept what’s there or you can make it happen and create the change that you want to see.”