10 cultured meat firms driving sustainable meals in 2025

An unsustainable demand for meat has led to firms on the lookout for various options to standard farming strategies with a purpose to change the way in which we eat and take into consideration meat. For biotech firms specifically, given latest developments in know-how, it has introduced a chance 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. Finally, the cells type muscle fibers, leading to ‘lab-grown meat’. 

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

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 non-public fairness agency L Catterton, meals big Cargill, and UAE sovereign wealth fund DisruptAD, Aleph Farms goals to distinguish itself from different firms with a deal with premium beef steaks. The truth is, the corporate acquired approval for its cultured meat in Israel final 12 months. 

Aleph Farms additionally not too long ago unveiled modifications to its core know-how that can permit it to make entire cuts of beef with fewer steps and at a decrease price. Up to now, 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 type 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 additional $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 potential for all future generations to eat meat with out harming animals or the atmosphere by utilizing 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 variety of cell-based merchandise, together with hamburgers, rooster breast, and kebab meat.

Making cultured meat merchandise accessible and inexpensive is certainly one of Believer Meat’s predominant goals, and its environment friendly progress course of permits it to provide cultivated meat at an analogous price to conventionally farmed meat. The truth is, in 2021, the corporate introduced it may make nearly 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 sequence B financing spherical, which on the time marked the biggest ever funding in cultured meat, simply three years after the corporate’s launch. 

The aesthetic meat firm is at present within the strategy of establishing 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 techniques to the meals, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. The partnership is targeted 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 classy meat business

Though not a direct developer of lab-grown meat, BioBetter is trying to relieve the excessive prices within the cultivated meat sector and deal with 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 provide meals, scale back animal cruelty, and make a constructive environmental influence. 

It has a singular methodology of doing this, harnessing some great benefits of tobacco vegetation by turning them into bioreactors to create sustainable animal-free progress elements. It has additionally developed a purification methodology that permits 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 present relies on a restricted provide of expensive progress elements for its operations. However BioBetter claims that its tobacco plant discovery may considerably scale back manufacturing prices by 300%.

In its sequence A funding spherical in 2022, BioBetter acquired $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 permit 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 classy meat business.

Eat Simply (Good Meat)

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

Eat Simply, an organization centered on various 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 permitted on the market when it acquired regulatory approval to market its lab-grown rooster in Singapore in 2020. 

Extra not too long ago, in 2023, Good Meat additionally turned the joint-first firm, alongside Upside Meals, to have its cultivated rooster permitted by the U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA), marking the primary time any form of cultivated meat had acquired approval within the U.S.

Moreover, in 2022, it was introduced that Good Meat signed a seven-year cope with 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, on account of open this 12 months.

Meatable 

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

Meatable’s predominant focus is at present 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 pace and at 100% effectivity, in line with 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, by 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 lowered 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 not too long ago collaborated with three world organizations devoted to advancing sustainable meals techniques: Meals Tank, The United Nations World Compact, and The Starvation Venture. This collaboration is a part of Meatable’s ongoing efforts to handle 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 formidable €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 constructing beef’. It produces its cultured meat by accumulating 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 Submit was behind the world’s first hamburger constructed from cultured meat, which was unveiled at a information convention in London in 2013. The burger, constructed from 20,000 muscle fibers grown from cow stem cells, took three months to make and got here at a value of €250,000 ($330,000), financed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.

Considered one of Mosa Meat’s predominant focuses has been bringing down the manufacturing prices of cultured meat to make it extra inexpensive and accessible for shoppers. In March 2023, the classy meat firm introduced that it had signed a Letter of Intent with its investor, Nutreco, a worldwide chief in animal vitamin and aqua feed, to develop a cell feed provide chain. This might help to decrease prices by the usage of 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 choice to start out with cultivated fats is predicated 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) critiques 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 School London, Multus Biotechnology is a cultured meat firm trying to develop high-performance progress media formulations at an inexpensive value to domesticate cells. It makes use of a mixture of knowledge science and automation to display screen its library of progress media substances. 

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

Multus Biotechnology’s next-generation progress media substances and formulations type 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 might be important for optimum cell progress in cultivated meat manufacturing.

In the meantime, in January 2023, the corporate closed a £7.9 million ($9.5 million) sequence A funding spherical, led by Mandi Ventures, an early-stage enterprise capital fund. The funding will permit 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 boost its cultivated rooster meat course of with Stämm’s novel bioreactor

SuperMeat’s mission is to carry the world the very best high quality rooster meat, grown instantly 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 rising 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 atmosphere.

The aesthetic meat firm not too long ago 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 will possibly now produce 100% cultivated rooster at $11.79 per pound on a big scale. This can be a vital step in the direction of commercialisation and alerts progress for the business in its efforts to supply an inexpensive, sustainable various to standard 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 boost muscle fiber progress, elongation, and fusion into mature muscle tissue, whereas additionally enhancing adipocyte formation, to provide natural whole-cut items. These developments are anticipated to lead to a major improve in product mass, enabling the manufacturing of cost-effective cultivated meat that intently mimics typical meat construction and taste.

Upside Meals

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

Previously referred to as 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 suitable for eating. The corporate then went on to turn into the join-first, alongside Good Meat, to have its cultured rooster permitted 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 sequence A funding spherical with assist from Invoice Gates and Richard Branson. In the meantime, it acquired $161 million in its sequence B funding spherical in 2020 and $400 million in its newest sequence C spherical, which is the biggest funding spherical within the cultivated meat business to this point. 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 at this time, 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 permitted sale of cultured meat in Australia. 

Vow, which is predicated in Sydney, produces its merchandise from cultured Japanese quail cells, promoting them beneath the Solid model, which launched final 12 months in choose Singapore eating places. The rationale for cultivating quail cells is that they had been one of many first cells that had been discovered to develop very well. This was realized after Vow had cultivated cells from about 50 species, together with a large meatball product of woolly mammoth. Ultimately, 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

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

In 2020, Singapore turned the primary nation the place lab-grown meats might be legally offered. This was adopted by the U.S. three years later, Israel final 12 months, and Australia earlier at this time, 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 intention right here is to ship a “complete, unbiased data base about cultured meat and seafood and their place within the meals system.”

Nonetheless, 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 options for the sake of the planet and, in some circumstances, their very own well being, means that this know-how might be set to essentially break by in additional international locations within the coming years.

Are you interested by sustainable agriculture and meals R&D?

Obtain Inpart’s newest report, exploring the present analysis challenges, R&D traits, and breakthrough improvements in sustainable agriculture, crop science, and various proteins.