New Age Eats Shuts Down, Cites Financial and Regulatory Challenges

Alternative protein player New Age Eats, formerly New Age Meats, won’t be ushering in a new age of proteins under either moniker.

On Friday, Brian Spear, founder and CEO of New Age, announced on LinkedIn that the Berkeley-based food tech startup is shutting down. However, he claims multiple other companies will “pick up the baton” and use New Age’s technology, which is designed to create hybrid alt-pork products by combining cell-cultivated and plant based meat, to further the broader category’s shared mission.

“Creating the experience of meat without slaughter is extremely difficult,” Spears said in the post. “We [started] with biotech borrowed from human health applications designed for high cost, low volume products. We worked to flip to low cost, high volume products. That is expensive, takes time, and needs a lot of patient capital.”

After five years of operation and $32 million in total investment dollars, New Age still faced a range of regulatory hurdles before being able to sell a commercial product. Spears claims in the post that while investors proved to be the “most efficient way” to validate the commercial viability of cell-grown meat, the company was unable to attract additional investment due to the “recent capital market turmoil.”

Investors in New Age Eats include SOSV’s IndieBio, TechU Ventures, Siddhi Capital and RXBAR founder Peter Rahal’s Litani Ventures, among others. The company has already taken its website down, but the brand’s social media channels remain active.

The news comes only two months after Spears announced New Age would be walking away from its “90% complete and 80% paid for” 20,000 sq. ft. pilot production facility in Alameda, California which houses manufacturing and office space as well as three food and R&D labs. The company began construction after closing a $25 million capital raise in October 2021, and was soliciting offers for the facility as of January 2023.

Spears said he takes “ultimate responsibility” for New Age’s closure, noting that when the company began, they had “no blueprint” to develop or commercialize the products. He has not yet shared details regarding the company’s approximately 45 former employees, many of whom helped develop that blueprint over the years.

However, Spears has already launched a new project, the Founder Mental Health Pledge, which intends to unite a “coalition of startup investors, founders, and leaders” to destigmatize mental health within the startup community, states Spear’s LinkedIn profile.

“[Being a founder] has been the best and worst thing I have ever done,” Spears said in the post. “I have an entirely new perspective on who I am, consciousness, meaning, suffering, happiness, and the stories that create our reality.”

The news of New Age’s challenges comes on the heels of some regulatory movement in the cell-cultivated meat industry. Last week, food tech company GOOD Meat secured initial approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its lab-grown chicken formulation and product. Additionally, late last year Upside Foods became the first cell-cultivated meat producer to secure FDA approval. Both companies are working toward a commercial launch.

Spear did not return requests for comment.