Meati and Aleph Farms Secure New Funding

Meati Raises $50 Million

Mycelium-based meat alternative maker Meati this week announced the close of a $50 million funding round that the company will use to scale its production capacity and double its team ahead of a planned commercial launch next year.

Technology investment firm BOND co-led the round with previous investor Acre Venture Partners, with participation from other existing investors including Prelude Ventures, Congruent Ventures, Tao Capital, Once Upon a Farm CEO John Foraker, Sweetgreen co-founders Nicolas Jammet and Jonathan Neman. Other investors in the round include former Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb, former White House Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Sam Kass and Almanac Investments founder David Barber and former Patagonia CEO Rose Marcario, who joined the company’s board of directors earlier this year.

The latest funding round follows $18 million in debt financing that arrived in April to fund the construction of and equipment for Meati’s new 80,000 square foot production facility. The company also closed a $28 million funding round in November 2020, led by Acre Venture Partners.

Since its inception in 2016, Meati has been focused on scaling production of its fungi-based meat alternatives; the company currently produce the equivalent amount of plant-based meat that would be generated by 4,500 cows every day. Acre Venture Partners co-founder and managing partner Lucas Mann said in a press release that the “pace of progress at Meati, in terms of both product and business development, has exceeded our expectations.”

“We are not aware of any other product on the market that can match the nutrition, texture and price versatility of Meati,” he said. “Meati is creating a new category of food.”

Still, the company has yet to bring a commercialized product to market, saying that its mycelium-based chicken breasts, steak and jerky are in the “final stages of development,” while other products such as pork tenderloin and deli meats are also in the works. Meati has yet to disclose which of these products it plans to bring to market in 2022, and whether these will launch in retail or foodservice.

“Our team has been working diligently to build and optimize our ability to grow products in ways that have never been done before,” Meati co-founder and CTO Justin Whiteley said in a press release. “Meati is on a faster trajectory than we ever expected. We’re thrilled to be quickly moving closer to our goal of making Meati accessible to everyone.”

Aleph Farms Secures $105 Million

Israel-based cultivated meat company Aleph Farms today announced it has secured $105 million in funding to scale the manufacturing and commercialization of its cultivated beef steaks ahead of a global launch next year.

L Catterton’s Growth Fund and DisruptAD led the round, with food and meat companies Skyviews Life Science, Thai Union, BRF and CJ CheilJedang also participating alongside previous investors such as VisVires New Protein, Strauss Group and Cargill. The new funding brings Aleph’s total capital raised to date to over $118 million.

Aleph Farms co-founder and CEO Didier Toubia said in a press release that the new capital brings the company “significantly closer to our vision of providing secure and unconditional access to high-quality nutrition to anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

“We see our investors as partners for building this new category of meat and it was critical to us that they share our strong commitment to improving the sustainability of our global food systems,” he said.

Founded in 2017, the company grows beef steaks from non-genetically engineered cells isolated from living cows. After first demonstrating a proof of concept with a thin-cut steak in 2018, earlier this year, Aleph unveiled it had produced a cultivated ribeye steak, stating it now had the ability to “produce any type of steak” through cell cultivation and 3D bioprinting. The company said it will also use funding to continue expanding its product lines, and is currently working with regulatory agencies on its plans to launch its products next year, though it did not disclose where. Cellular meat has not been approved for sale in the U.S. by the FDA or USDA.

As the company scales production, it is also looking to reach cost parity with conventional meat, an important aspect for investors, Michael Farello, managing partner at L Catterton’s Growth Fund and Kenneth Lee, managing partner at VisVires New Protein, both noted in a press release.

“Aleph Farms has the best available technology and team to overcome the major hurdle of scalability,“ Lee said. “Already, Aleph Farms has substantially cut production costs, confirming our investment thesis: cost parity with conventional meat will be a commercial reality closer to 5 than 10 years.”

What’s The Opportunity?

Both fermented and cell-cultured meat companies brought in notable investment in 2020, looking to take a bite out of the $1.4 billion alternative meat category.

Newer fermentation-focused companies, including Nature’s Fynd, Air Protein and Prime Roots, also raised a total of $587 million last year. In addition to utilizing a process similar to beer brewing which has proved to be more easily scalable, these brands could offer consumers alternative meat options made from sources other than the standard pea, wheat and soy ingredients many other brands have looked to to-date.

Meanwhile, cultivated meat startups also had a notable investment year in 2020, bringing in $350 million in funding and accounting for 14% of funding in the alternative meat sector, according to GFI.

Meati’s competitors in the cultivated meat space in the U.S. include Atlast Food Co., which also produces mycelium-derived whole-cut meat products, and Prime Roots, which produces meat using Japanese mycoprotein though both companies have largely focused on bacon alternatives. Other players in the cultivated meat space include Israel-based company Future Meat Technologies, which scored over $26 million in funding earlier this year, as well as Netherlands-based Meatable and Mosa Meat.

No cell cultured meat products have had commercial launches in the U.S., as many like Upside Foods — which secured the largest investment in the cultivated meat space last year — are awaiting regulatory approval from the FDA. However, the cultivated meat space reached an important milestone internationally last December when Eat Just received approval for the sale of its cultivated chicken in Singapore, the first country to approve the sale of these products.

While plant-based burgers, grounds and nuggets have largely dominated the conversation in recent years, both fermentation and cell cultivation present opportunities for companies to meet the demand for whole-cut meat alternatives like chicken breasts and steak, which few plant-based brands have produced. According to the Good Food Institute, whole-cut meat products are the highest margin and “most desirable segment” of the $1.7 trillion global meat market.

“We really do encourage research and development in that whole muscle texture area because it would allow alternative protein companies to start tapping into that demand that currently companies don’t have access to,” GFI analyst Kyle Gaan told NOSH earlier this year.