David Protein has gone from a new protein bar to one of the fastest-growing names in functional food in just two years.
Now the company behind it is getting much bigger.
Medici Brands, the parent company of David Protein, has raised $250 million in Series B funding, giving the company fresh capital to expand David, grow its newly launched candy brand HallPass, and build additional food brands across new categories.
The financing was co-led by Greenoaks and Valor Equity Partners, with participation from CEO Peter Rahal, ICONIQ, and Imaginary Ventures.
The raise reportedly values Medici Brands at $2.25 billion.
For a company built around a protein bar that only launched direct-to-consumer in September 2024, the growth has been remarkably fast.
But the latest funding suggests something even bigger is happening.
David may have been the product that introduced consumers to Peter Rahal’s latest food company.
Medici Brands appears to be the real long-term play.
From One Protein Bar to a $2.25 Billion Food Company
David launched in September 2024 with a straightforward proposition: put as much protein as possible into a bar while keeping calories low.
Its flagship Gold protein bars currently contain 28 grams of protein, 150 calories, and zero grams of sugar.
That gives the product a particularly high protein-to-calorie ratio and helped David distinguish itself in a protein bar aisle already filled with established companies.
The strategy worked.
David has expanded from its original bars into additional formats, including protein shakes and frozen desserts, while reaching more than 35,000 retail locations, including Walmart, Target, and Costco.
The company says it is on track to surpass $300 million in revenue in 2026.
That’s an enormous trajectory for a brand that was essentially nonexistent two years ago.
And it explains why investors aren’t just betting on David anymore.
They’re betting on the company behind it.
What Is Medici Brands?
Medici Brands is the parent company created around Peter Rahal’s growing portfolio of food businesses.
Rahal isn’t new to building food brands.
He previously co-founded RXBAR, which became one of the defining better-for-you snack brands of the 2010s before Kellogg acquired the company for $600 million in 2017.
The philosophy behind RXBAR was largely built around simplicity. Its packaging famously displayed its core ingredients directly on the front of the wrapper.
David takes a different approach.
Instead of selling simplicity, David sells optimization.
The question isn’t necessarily, How few ingredients can we use?
It’s closer to: How much better can we make the macros?
That approach helped David find an opening in an increasingly competitive protein market.
Now Medici wants to apply a similar philosophy beyond protein bars.
The $250 Million Raise
Medici’s new $250 million financing follows David’s $75 million Series A in 2025.
Greenoaks and Valor Equity Partners participated in both rounds, giving two existing investors an even larger stake in Rahal’s vision.
The new capital will be used across several areas.
Medici plans to expand David into additional products and categories, grow the retail footprint and product portfolio of HallPass, continue investing in food technology and product development, and create infrastructure capable of launching additional consumer brands.
That last part may ultimately be the most important.
Medici isn’t positioning itself as the company that owns David.
It is positioning itself as a platform capable of repeatedly building food brands.
David was simply the first proof point.
Protein Bars Have Become a Much Bigger Business
David’s rapid rise also reflects how dramatically the protein category has changed.
Protein bars were once primarily associated with bodybuilding, gyms, and sports nutrition.
Today, they’re mainstream snacks.
Consumers can walk into a grocery store, convenience store, Target, Costco, or airport and choose between dozens of products with completely different approaches to protein.
Quest Nutrition has expanded protein beyond bars into chips, cookies, crackers, shakes, powders, candy-style products, and baked goods.
Barebells has built its identity around making high-protein snacks feel more like traditional candy bars and desserts.
BUILT has leaned heavily into texture and indulgence with products like its marshmallow-style BUILT Puffs.
ALOHA has taken a plant-based approach, offering bars with 14 grams of protein while avoiding dairy, soy, stevia, and sugar alcohol sweeteners.
Perfect Snacks occupies another corner of the category entirely, emphasizing refrigerated bars made with ingredients like nut butters and honey.
These aren’t five companies selling essentially the same product.
They’re five different interpretations of what a protein snack should be.
David found another one.
Its defining metric is protein efficiency.
David’s 28-Gram Advantage
David’s Gold bars contain 28 grams of protein for 150 calories.
That’s the number the company has built much of its identity around.
Instead of simply marketing a product as "high protein," David focuses on how much of the product’s caloric content actually comes from protein.
The company says roughly 75% of the calories in a Gold bar come from protein.
That gives David a straightforward marketing message:
More protein. Fewer calories.
The simplicity of that message matters.
Protein brands increasingly compete on dozens of variables—ingredients, sugar, carbohydrates, calories, fiber, texture, flavor, protein source, plant-based formulations, and more.
David essentially turned the category into a ratio.
And that ratio gave consumers something immediately understandable to compare.
The Ingredient Behind David’s Macros
There’s also another company inside Medici that could prove just as strategically important as David itself.
Epogee developed EPG, a plant-based fat technology designed to deliver the functional characteristics of traditional fat with substantially fewer calories.
David acquired Epogee in 2025.
That deal gave the company control over an ingredient that plays an important role in helping David create indulgent-tasting foods while maintaining unusually aggressive calorie targets.
This is where Medici starts looking different from a traditional consumer packaged goods company.
It isn’t just developing brands.
It also owns food technology that can potentially be deployed across those brands.
David demonstrated one application.
HallPass could demonstrate another.
Future Medici brands could expand the concept further.
HallPass Is the Next Test
David may have established Medici’s playbook, but HallPass will test whether it works outside protein.
HallPass launched nationwide at Walmart in August 2026.
The brand is targeting candy.
Its products include lower-calorie, lower-sugar versions of familiar confectionery formats, including peanut butter cups, wafers, and chocolatey candy pieces.
The strategy is similar to David in one important way.
Medici isn’t necessarily asking consumers to abandon the food they already like.
It’s attempting to redesign that food.
Rahal has described the broader mission as making familiar foods "smarter" by reducing calories and sugar without sacrificing the experience consumers expect from the category.
If David is Medici’s answer to the protein bar, HallPass is its attempt to apply that philosophy to the candy aisle.
And Then There’s Rowdy
Medici has already revealed that another consumer brand, Rowdy, is expected to launch later in 2026.
Details remain limited, although Rahal has indicated that the brand involves chips.
That would bring Medici into yet another enormous category.
Protein.
Candy.
Chips.
The progression starts to reveal the broader strategy.
Rather than creating one enormous health-food brand that stretches across every aisle, Medici can create individual brands specifically designed for different categories.
Each gets its own identity.
Each gets its own products.
But underneath them sits the same product-development infrastructure and food technology.
If that strategy works, Medici could effectively become a next-generation house of food brands.
The Bigger Shift Toward Protein
David’s rise is also arriving at a moment when protein has become one of the most visible trends across food and wellness.
Protein isn’t limited to shakes and bars anymore.
It’s appearing in cereal, pasta, coffee, desserts, chips, candy, pancakes, yogurt, and countless other everyday foods.
Consumers aren’t necessarily thinking about protein exclusively as sports nutrition either.
The conversation has expanded into satiety, healthy aging, muscle preservation, weight management, and everyday nutrition.
We’ve seen the same shift elsewhere across the wellness industry.
As Vital Report covered in our breakdown of the best creatine brands of 2026, products once associated primarily with serious gym-goers are increasingly moving into the mainstream.
Protein has arguably traveled even further.
The protein bar is no longer simply a workout product.
It’s competing with conventional snacks.
And David seems to understand that distinction particularly well.
David Isn’t Stopping at Bars
Another important part of the $250 million raise is that David itself is expanding.
The brand now sells ready-to-drink protein shakes delivering around 30 grams of protein per bottle.
It has entered frozen desserts.
It even experimented with canned wild-caught Atlantic cod, a product that sounds almost absurd next to a chocolate chip cookie dough protein bar but makes perfect sense within David’s broader philosophy.
The common denominator isn’t the format.
It’s protein.
That gives David considerably more room to expand than its name as a "protein bar company" might initially suggest.
If the brand can successfully translate its protein-efficiency positioning into beverages, desserts, snacks, and other categories, bars may eventually become only one piece of the business.
Why Investors Are Betting $250 Million on Medici
The size of the Series B makes more sense when viewed through that lens.
Investors aren’t putting $250 million behind another protein bar flavor.
They’re investing in the possibility that Medici can repeatedly identify massive food categories, use technology to change their nutritional profiles, build compelling consumer brands around those products, and then distribute them at national scale.
David has already provided evidence that the model can work.
Going from a direct-to-consumer launch in 2024 to more than 35,000 retail locations and a projected $300 million-plus in 2026 revenue is an unusually rapid growth curve.
The question now is whether Medici can replicate it.
If HallPass becomes a major candy brand and Rowdy successfully enters another aisle, David starts looking less like a one-off success and more like the first company built using a repeatable system.
The Bottom Line
David Protein’s growth has been remarkable.
The brand launched direct-to-consumer in September 2024 with essentially one core product.
Two years later, David is sold in more than 35,000 retail locations, has expanded beyond bars, and is expected to help push Medici Brands toward more than $300 million in 2026 revenue.
Now its parent company has another $250 million to work with.
The funding gives Medici the resources to accelerate David, expand HallPass, develop Rowdy, invest in product innovation, and potentially build an entire portfolio of food brands around the same basic idea:
Take foods people already want to eat and redesign their nutritional profiles without making them feel like traditional "diet" products.
David proved consumers were interested.
HallPass is the next test.
Rowdy will be another.
And at a reported $2.25 billion valuation, investors are making a sizable bet that Peter Rahal’s next big success won’t be one protein bar brand.
It will be the company that keeps building them.