Five or six years ago the press coverage around cultivated meat was almost universally positive. Today, we’re seeing headlines about cancerous cells, ‘vaporware,’ and business failures. So where does the industry go from here?
Some commentators argue that cultivated meat is a food tech fantasy. So are they right? It all depends on your approach, says Joshua March, cofounder and CEO at San Leandro-based startup SciFi Foods.
Dutch startup Meatable has slashed production times for cultivated pork from three weeks to eight days in the past year by dramatically speeding up the process by which its stem cells differentiate into fat and muscle, transforming its unit economics.
Alt protein investor Lever VC has released its internal playbook for assessing the scientific progress of early-stage cultivated meat companies to help investors place more informed bets in a “complex and nascent industry” and help avoid a “Theranos-style outcome.”
Dutch cultivated meat startup Mosa Meat has opened a new 30,000sq ft ‘scale-up plant’ in Maastricht as it edges closer to commercialization.
Better Bite Ventures, a fund focused on alt protein startups in APAC, has invested in four startups under its early-stage First Bite initative.
Growing meat from animal cells instead of plundering the oceans and slaughtering billions of sentient creatures sounds like a no-brainer. But we have to aim for cost parity, says Fork & Good: “It’s a totally useless exercise to make these products at a price nobody can afford.”
California startups raised nearly twice as much funding as the second-largest global market for VC investment in agrifoodtech.
Believer Meats has a new Burger, Freight Farms grows its indoor ag team.
While investor sentiment has soured on alternative proteins, last month’s Future Food Tech summit in San Francisco attracted a record number of foodtech startups showcasing everything from foodie chatbots to upcycled prebiotic fibers.
“It’s going to take fully-fledged tissue muscle tissue to convince die hard meat lovers [to eat cell-cultured meat],” says the founder of Myodenovo, a cultivated meat startup emerging from stealth with a mission to create thick, whole cuts, starting with a filet mignon steak.
2023 will be a pivotal year for cultivated meat, as a handful of well-capitalized startups hit the market and early-stage players wait with bated breath to see if consumers are sufficiently enthused to motivate anxious investors to keep funding the nascent space, said investors at the Future Food Tech conference.
Cultivated meat startup New Age Eats has made the ‘painful decision’ to shut down after failing to secure funding to complete work on its pilot plant in Alameda, CA.
Cultivated meat is edging closer to commercialization in the US as GOOD Meat becomes the second startup to secure a ‘no questions’ letter from the FDA affirming the safety of its process for growing chicken from cells, outside of the animal.
Cocoon Bioscience will grow its high-value proteins business, which includes developing recombinant growth factors for cultivated meat.
Plus, the USDA’s office of the chief scientist gets a new director and cultivated meat startup Upside Foods expands its leadership team.
New frontiers in biotechnology and fermentation are being deployed to reduce the environmental impact of our animal-based food system. But do developments in cellular agriculture take ethics into account?
Israeli startup Ever After Foods (formerly Plurinuva) has unveiled technology it claims can transform the unit economics of cultivated meat by reducing the capex required to build facilities and increasing the productivity of tissue production.
Israeli startup Aleph Farms has struck deals enabling it to take an “asset-light” approach to scaling up cultivated meat production in Israel and Singapore. CEO Didier Toubia tells AFN Aleph is also scouting for sites in the US for a larger scale facility and believes it can achieve cost parity with premium beef by 2028.
The alternative protein sector was ‘overhyped, but now its demise is being over exaggerated,’ said investors at a recent industry event as the GFI unveiled results of a global investor survey suggesting a mood of cautious optimism.
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