Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

New Age Meats

New Age Meats Raises Another $2M Seed Extension Round for ‘Hybrid’ Meat

Berkley, California-based New Age Meats (NAM) has raised another $2 million seed extension round following a previous extension of the same amount last year.

This round was led by “a very large, significant industry player” in Asia that must remain confidential, NAM said in a press release. The round also included participation from Litani Ventures’ Peter Rahal, ff VC, SOSV, and Innovating Capital, as well as new investments by San Diego Tech Coast Angels, BeniVC, Oceanic Partners, Deep Ventures, and Climate Capital.

NAM, a graduate of the IndieBio accelerator program, is currently developing what the company calls “hybrid cultivated and plant-based meat” that for now includes pork sausages and dumplings. Its current process is to grow meat from cells collected from the animal, then adds plant-based elements for additional taste, texture, and nutritional profile.

The blended approach to cultured meat is arguably one that can both get companies’ products to market faster and help them reach price parity with traditional meat products. Another company, Israel-based Future Meat, also uses this tactic, and in a recent interview with The Spoon, CEO Rom Kshuk called it “low-hanging fruit” when it comes to price parity and scalability. 

NAM’s own CEO, Brian Spears, said in a statement today that his company is “relentlessly focused” on driving down costs and scaling production. “Ultimately, we will fail if our products are too expensive and low volume to be served anywhere but luxury restaurants,” he said.

This new funding will allow NAM to continue building up its team, which includes former staffers from Impossible Foods. The company is also preparing for a Series A round “in the coming months,” though no detailed timeframe was given.

NAM has raised a total of $7 million to date.

New Age Meats Raises Another $2M for Cell-Based Pork

Cultivated meat startup New Age Meats (NAM) announced today it has raised a $2 million seed extension round led by TechU Ventures. The round follows the NAM’s $2.7 million seed round from earlier this year and brings the company’s total funding to $5 million.

The Berkeley, CA company is currently developing a cell-based pork sausage and says the new funds will go towards this development. In particular, that includes bringing the price point of its product down. 

NAM will also use the funds to further build out its Food Science department, which it says is focused on getting the key attributes — taste, smell, texture, etc. — of its cell-based pork as close to the real thing as possible. On that note, the company held a taste test for its pork back in 2018 and received largely positive reviews. 

Another key element to NAM’s methods is its use of automation to optimize bioreactors and essentially grow its meat faster. Part of the new funding will go towards implementing more of this automation, as well as robotics, to speed up both the research and development processes. 

Investment in cell-based meat has already reached over $1 billion in 2020 so far, which is almost double what it was for all of 2019. Cell-based meat makes up a small-but-significant portion of that investment, and NAM’s seed extension follows funding news from BlueNalu, Integriculture, and others. 

Though the company didn’t provide a timeframe, NAM said today it plans to eventually build out a pilot facility, scale product development and production, and bring its first products to market.

New Age Meats, the First Company to Debut Cell-based Pork Sausage, Raises $2.7M

Yesterday New Age Meats, a cellular agriculture developing cultured meat, announced it had closed $2.7 million in seed funding. The round was led by ff Venture Capital and other investors include Agronomics Ltd, Sand Hill Angels, Supernode Ventures, Hemisphere Ventures, Kairos Ventures and SOSV, which previously invested in the company during New Age Meats’ time at the IndieBio accelerator program.

For now, the Berkeley-California-based company is focusing on cell-based pork. They’ve already made significant strides — New Age Meats did the first ever taste test of cell-based pork back in 2018 to positive reviews. They hope to bring a cultured meat product — probably pork — to market within the next couple of years.

According to CEO Brian Spears, who I spoke to earlier that year, their startup’s edge comes from harnessing automation and data science to optimize bioreactors — in short, to grow more meat more quickly. Prior to founding New Age Meats Spears, who has a background in engineering had started a research automation company. He claims that by harnessing automation they can dramatically speed up not only research for cultured meat, but can also press fast-forward on manufacturing. 

Not surprisingly, according to a press release New Age Meats will channel its seed round into investments in automation equipment and growing its team.

Over the past few months there’s been a lot of money funneled into cultured meat and seafood startups: Wild Type, Future Meat, Shiok Meats, and Meatable have all announced new funds over the past six months. And just today Mosa Meats, the company which debuted the first ever cultured hamburger back in 2013, announced it had formed new strategic partnerships to accelerate its launch date.

With so much new capital, it seems like the race to bring cell-based meat to market is heating up (despite the fact that there are still significant regulatory hurdles). TBD if New Age Meats’ focus on automation can help it win that race, but this new funding certainly won’t hurt.