10 cultured meat corporations driving sustainable meals in 2025

An unsustainable demand for meat has led to corporations in search of different options to traditional farming strategies to be able to change the way in which we eat and take into consideration meat. For biotech corporations specifically, given latest developments in know-how, it has introduced a possibility to additional discover lab-grown meat. 

Cultured meat is grown utilizing cells acquired from animals by biopsy with out the animal being harmed. These harvested cells are then positioned in check tubes or bioreactors with a progress medium, which incorporates vitamins for the cells to develop and multiply. Ultimately, the cells kind muscle fibers, leading to ‘lab-grown meat’. 

On this article, we check out 10 cultured meat corporations driving the shift in the direction of sustainable meals programs.

Aleph Farms 

• Headquarters: Israel 
• Based: 2017
• Current information: Raised $29 million in funding 

Being one of many better-funded gamers within the cultivated meat business, with backers together with personal fairness agency L Catterton, meals large Cargill, and UAE sovereign wealth fund DisruptAD, Aleph Farms goals to distinguish itself from different corporations with a deal with premium beef steaks. In truth, the corporate obtained approval for its cultured meat in Israel final 12 months. 

Aleph Farms additionally lately unveiled modifications to its core know-how that may enable it to make complete cuts of beef with fewer steps and at a decrease price. So far, Aleph has been proliferating its cells in a single bioreactor after which transferring them to a second bioreactor the place they’re seeded onto plant-based scaffolds and mature into fats and muscle cells to kind its signature skinny steaks. However its new strategy will see it do away with the second step, triggering its cells to partially differentiate into fats and muscle within the first bioreactor by altering the media composition. It then harvests the cells and provides them to a plant protein matrix. 

Moreover, the corporate introduced earlier this 12 months that it had raised $29 million in funding and stated it expects to lift an extra $10 to $15 million within the coming months.

Believer Meats

• Headquarters: Israel
• Based: 2018
• Current information: Signed a strategic partnership settlement final 12 months with GEA

Believer Meats – beforehand named Future Meat – is on a mission to make it attainable for all future generations to eat meat with out harming animals or the setting through the use of non-GMO know-how, which it claims permits it to attain higher-density cell cultures and extra environment friendly media use than different cultured meat startups. The corporate is growing a spread of cell-based merchandise, together with hamburgers, rooster breast, and kebab meat.

Making cultured meat merchandise accessible and reasonably priced is considered one of Believer Meat’s most important goals, and its environment friendly progress course of permits it to supply cultivated meat at the same price to conventionally farmed meat. In truth, in 2021, the corporate introduced it may make virtually a pound of cultivated rooster for $7.70, with a 110-gram rooster breast costing $1.70 to make. 

Additionally in 2021, Believer Meats raised €308 million ($347 million) in a collection B financing spherical, which on the time marked the most important ever funding in cultured meat, simply three years after the corporate’s launch. 

The aesthetic meat firm is at the moment within the strategy of setting up its first U.S. industrial facility in Wilson, North Carolina, which, at 200,000 sq. ft, would be the greatest cultured meat manufacturing heart on this planet. It additionally signed a strategic partnership settlement final 12 months with GEA, one of many world’s largest suppliers of production-scale tools and programs to the meals, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. The partnership is concentrated on co-developing applied sciences and processes to enhance the unit economics and sustainability of cultivated meat manufacturing.

BioBetter 

• Headquarters: Israel
• Based: 2015
• Current information: Opened its first food-grade pilot facility to speed up the manufacturing of progress elements for the aesthetic meat business

Though not a direct developer of lab-grown meat, BioBetter is seeking to relieve the excessive prices within the cultivated meat sector and sort out the restricted availability of progress elements, which play an important half in enabling cells to multiply. The corporate’s imaginative and prescient entails utilizing its inexperienced know-how to produce meals, cut back animal cruelty, and make a optimistic environmental influence. 

It has a novel technique of doing this, harnessing the benefits of tobacco vegetation by turning them into bioreactors to create sustainable animal-free progress elements. It has additionally developed a purification technique that allows cost-efficiency within the limitless manufacturing scale of proteins. Progress elements are, after all, important within the cultivated meat course of for cells to develop and multiply. The mobile agriculture business at the moment is dependent upon a restricted provide of pricey progress elements for its operations. However BioBetter claims that its tobacco plant discovery may considerably cut back manufacturing prices by 300%.

In its collection A funding spherical in 2022, BioBetter obtained $10 million, led by Jerusalem Enterprise Companions (JVP), with further funding from Milk and Honey Ventures and the Israeli Innovation Authority (IIA). On the time, the corporate stated that the funding would enable it to maneuver to a bigger pilot facility to assist improve its tobacco plant processing capability. Certainly, in 2023, it introduced that it had opened its first food-grade pilot facility to speed up the manufacturing of its progress elements for the aesthetic meat business.

Eat Simply (Good Meat)

• Headquarters: California, U.S. 
• Based: 2011
• Current information: Obtained USDA approval for cultivated rooster

Eat Simply, an organization targeted on different egg merchandise, has a cultured meat division known as Good Meat, which primarily focuses on rising rooster. It turned the primary ever cultured meat firm to have its product authorised on the market when it obtained regulatory approval to market its lab-grown rooster in Singapore in 2020. 

Extra lately, in 2023, Good Meat additionally turned the joint-first firm, alongside Upside Meals, to have its cultivated rooster authorised by the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA), marking the primary time any form of cultivated meat had obtained approval within the U.S.

Moreover, in 2022, it was introduced that Good Meat signed a seven-year take care of bioprocess tools specialist ABEC to design, manufacture, set up, and fee the business’s largest recognized bioreactors for producing avian and mammalian cell-based meat. In January 2023, plans had been introduced to put in a 6,000-liter bioreactor at its new facility in Singapore, as a consequence of open this 12 months.

Meatable 

• Headquarters: The Netherlands
• Based: 2018
• Current information: Collaborated with three world organizations devoted to advancing sustainable meals programs

Meatable’s most important focus is at the moment on cultivated pork merchandise, which it produces with its opti-ox know-how that may develop actual muscle and fats cells from pluripotent stem cells at velocity and at 100% effectivity, in response to the corporate. It additionally stated that its know-how was adaptable to any cell-based species, together with cows, sheep, and fish. 

Final 12 months, the cultivated meat firm hosted Europe’s first pre-approval cultured meat tasting, during which folks tried Meatable’s lab-grown sausage. The product incorporates 28% cultivated pork fats, whereas the remaining substances are plant-based. The corporate additionally stated that it had decreased the manufacturing time of its product by 50%, which means it now has a four-day manufacturing interval as an alternative of an eight-day one. 

Meatable additionally lately collaborated with three world organizations devoted to advancing sustainable meals programs: Meals Tank, The United Nations World Compact, and The Starvation Mission. This collaboration is a part of Meatable’s ongoing efforts to deal with the environmental and societal challenges of world meals manufacturing.

Final 12 months, the corporate introduced that it had raised €7.6 million ($8.7 million) in funding from the Netherlands Enterprise Company. Since its launch in 2018, Meatable has raised a powerful €97 million ($112 million) in funding. 

Mosa Meat

• Headquarters: The Netherlands
• Based: 2016
• Current information: Submitted its first EU Market Authorization request for its cultivated beef fats

Mosa Meat is a Netherlands-based meals know-how firm aiming to reshape the worldwide meals system by pioneering a ‘cleaner, kinder method of creating beef’. It produces its cultured meat by gathering myosatellite cells from cows and rising them in a lab, the place the cells merge naturally, forming fibers that finally develop to 800 million strands of tissue from a single pattern. 

Firm co-founder Mark Publish was behind the world’s first hamburger produced from cultured meat, which was unveiled at a information convention in London in 2013. The burger, produced from 20,000 muscle fibers grown from cow stem cells, took three months to make and got here at a price of €250,000 ($330,000), financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Certainly one of Mosa Meat’s most important focuses has been bringing down the manufacturing prices of cultured meat to make it extra reasonably priced and accessible for shoppers. In March 2023, the aesthetic meat firm introduced that it had signed a Letter of Intent with its investor, Nutreco, a world chief in animal vitamin and aqua feed, to develop a cell feed provide chain. This might help to decrease prices by way of using food-grade substances – as an alternative of pharma-grade substances – in basal media (cell feed). 

Earlier this 12 months, Mosa Meat submitted its first EU Market Authorization request for its cultivated beef fats, which additionally alerts the primary cultivated beef submission within the EU’s historical past. The corporate stated that its resolution to begin with cultivated fats relies on the distinctive regulatory construction in Europe. In contrast to, for instance, in Singapore, the place complete merchandise are assessed, the European Meals Security Authority (EFSA) evaluations every novel ingredient individually. The corporate has now additionally filed for regulatory approval within the U.Ok. 

Multus Biotechnology

• Headquarters: U.Ok.
• Based: 2019
• Current information: Launched new food-grade basal media known as DMEM/F12-FG

Based in 2019 by 4 college students within the Life Sciences and Bioengineering departments of Imperial Faculty London, Multus Biotechnology is a cultured meat firm seeking to develop high-performance progress media formulations at an reasonably priced worth to domesticate cells. It makes use of a mixture of information science and automation to display screen its library of progress media substances. 

The corporate seeks to beat the technical problem throughout the cultured meat business of reaching scale and worth parity with farmed merchandise. By specializing in the invention of novel substances, the corporate can construct a sustainable provide chain of scalable and reasonably priced substances, utilizing manufacturing processes which have already been extensively adopted. 

Multus Biotechnology’s next-generation progress media substances and formulations kind the constructing blocks of mobile agriculture, enabling the manufacturing of animal merchandise utilizing cells as an alternative of the animal itself. In Might 2025, the corporate introduced the launch of its new food-grade basal media, known as DMEM/F12-FG. The formulation is designed to ship important vitamins, together with sugars, salts, minerals, and nutritional vitamins, which are vital for optimum cell progress in cultivated meat manufacturing.

In the meantime, in January 2023, the corporate closed a £7.9 million ($9.5 million) collection A funding spherical, led by Mandi Ventures, an early-stage enterprise capital fund. The funding will enable Multus Biotechnology to construct a world-first manufacturing progress media facility within the UK. 

SuperMeat

• Headquarters: Israel
• Based: 2015
• Current information: Collaborated with Stämm to reinforce its cultivated rooster meat course of with Stämm’s novel bioreactor

SuperMeat’s mission is to convey the world the very best high quality rooster meat, grown immediately from cells, in a sustainable and animal-friendly course of. It says that it believes cultivated meat will improve the meals system, offering dietary safety, drastically lowering carbon emissions, and growing meals security worldwide. The corporate’s rooster is produced from wholesome rooster cells, with no genetic engineering concerned, and is grown in a nutritious feed, with no antibiotics and in a contaminant-free setting.

The aesthetic meat firm lately introduced that it had managed to attain price parity for its lab-grown rooster with premium pasture-raised rooster within the U.S., which means that it may well now produce 100% cultivated rooster at $11.79 per pound on a big scale. It is a important step in the direction of commercialisation and alerts progress for the business in its efforts to supply an reasonably priced, sustainable different to traditional meat.

In the meantime, in February 2025, SuperMeat introduced a collaboration with biopharma manufacturing firm Stämm to additional improve SuperMeat’s cultivated rooster meat course of with Stämm’s novel bioreactor. The collaboration goals to reinforce muscle fiber progress, elongation, and fusion into mature muscle tissue, whereas additionally enhancing adipocyte formation, to supply natural whole-cut items. These developments are anticipated to end in a major improve in product mass, enabling the manufacturing of cost-effective cultivated meat that carefully mimics typical meat construction and taste.

Upside Meals

• Headquarters: California, U.S.
• Based: 2015
• Current information: Obtained USDA approval for cultivated rooster

Previously often called Memphis Meats, Upside Meals was the primary firm to be granted a ‘no questions’ letter from the FDA, indicating that the regulator had accepted UPSIDE Meals’ conclusion that its rooster is fit for human consumption. The corporate then went on to develop into the join-first, alongside Good Meat, to have its cultured rooster authorised by the USDA in 2023. The corporate is now additionally eyeing a second approval later this 12 months for its shredded rooster. 

The corporate additionally cultivated the world’s first lab-grown beef meatball, and in 2017, produced the world’s first cultivated rooster and duck meat. In 2021, it unveiled its new cultivated meat manufacturing facility within the U.S., EPIC, containing custom-made, patented cultivators that may produce over 50,000 kilos of cultured meat. 

In 2017, the corporate closed its $17 million collection A funding spherical with assist from Invoice Gates and Richard Branson. In the meantime, it obtained $161 million in its collection B funding spherical in 2020 and $400 million in its newest collection C spherical, which is the most important funding spherical within the cultivated meat business up to now. This introduced Upside Meals’ valuation on the time to over $1 billion, which helped to speed up its path to commercialization. 

Vow

• Headquarters: Australia
• Based: 2019
• Current information: Gained approval for cultivated meat merchandise in Australia

Simply as we speak, it was introduced that Vow’s cultivated whipped pate, foie gras, and an edible tallow candle will quickly be accessible on the menu at some high-end Australian eating places, together with Bottarga in Melbourne and Nel in Sydney. The merchandise have already been accessible in Singapore for greater than a 12 months, as Vow stated its demand had grown by 200% a month, however this marked the primary ever authorised sale of cultured meat in Australia. 

Vow, which relies in Sydney, produces its merchandise from cultured Japanese quail cells, promoting them underneath the Solid model, which launched final 12 months in choose Singapore eating places. The explanation for cultivating quail cells is that they had been one of many first cells that had been discovered to develop rather well. This was realized after Vow had cultivated cells from about 50 species, together with a large meatball fabricated from woolly mammoth. In the long run, the corporate discovered that “smaller is simpler.” 

In 2022, Vow secured AUD $73 million ($47.4 million) in a Sequence A funding spherical, which got here after it had raised AUD $7.7 million ($5 million) in seed funding in 2021 and opened its first manufacturing facility in Sydney in October 2022. 

Cultured meat: Progress made, however challenges stay

For the reason that world was launched to the primary lab-grown burger in 2013, developed by Mark Publish, co-founder and chief scientific officer (CSO) of Mosa Meat, the aesthetic meat sector has grown enormously, with buyers more and more extra prone to fund cultured meat startups. A latest report predicted that the worldwide cultured meat market can be value $2.1 billion by 2033, with that determine growing to $13.7 billion by 2043. 

In 2020, Singapore turned the primary nation the place lab-grown meats could possibly be legally offered. This was adopted by the U.S. three years later, Israel final 12 months, and Australia earlier as we speak, suggesting that international locations are starting to embrace the concept of cultured meat. Moreover, the European Union (EU) launched a analysis challenge in January 2024 known as Feasts. Funded by the Horizon program, the purpose right here is to ship a “complete, unbiased data base about cultured meat and seafood and their place within the meals system.”

Nevertheless, challenges nonetheless lie forward. In 2023, Italy turned the primary nation to formally ban the manufacturing, sale, and importation of cultivated meat, with the vote being seen as a victory for the nation’s agricultural sector and Italian cultural traditions. Even within the U.S., there have been pushbacks; final 12 months, Florida and Alabama turned the primary two states to ban the sale of cultivated meat and seafood.

However, the anticipated progress of the lab-grown meat market, in addition to the rising want from shoppers to seek out meat alternate options for the sake of the planet and, in some instances, their very own well being, means that this know-how could possibly be set to essentially break by way of in additional international locations within the coming years.

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