This article presents a detailed examination of 10 new clean meat companies advancing the field through advanced technological contributions and niche applications. These organizations offer specialized research materials and devices for cultured meat development, advanced cell culture supplements and microcarriers for optimized growth, innovative mycelium scaffolds for texture enhancement, and meat cultivation bioreactor systems for scaled production. Each company plays a pivotal role in propelling the clean meat industry forward, showcasing the vast and evolving applications of biotechnology in sustainable food production.
Continue reading to gain up-to-date and data-driven insights on:
Key Takeaways
Drawing insights from the Big Data & AI-powered StartUs Insights Discovery Platform that provides data on over 4.7+ million emerging companies globally, we explore the evolving landscape of the clean meat industry. This sector is marked by key trends and a substantial workforce, shaping its future. Here are some key insights at a glance:
- Latest Clean Meat Trends: Some of the major trends impacting the clean meat industry are advanced bioreactor designs for large-scale production, integration of machine learning for optimized growth conditions, development of serum-free & animal-free growth media, application of CRISPR & other gene-editing technologies, and automation in cell culture & harvesting processes.
- Clean Meat Industry Stats: The sector comprises 13K+ organizations worldwide. On average, it employs about 13 people in 1.2K+ new companies founded in the last five years, witnessing 2020 as the average founding year. Moreover, the average funding received by the clean meat industry per round in the same span is USD 898K.
- List of Clean Meat Companies (Top 10):
- Peace of Meat – Lab-grown Chicken & Duck Meat
- Smart MCs – Cultured Meat Research
- ProFuse – Cell Culture Supplement
- Alife – Cow Cell-based Cultured Schnitzel
- Atelier Meats – Scaffold-based Cultured Steaks
- Clever Carnivore – Meat Cultivation Bioreactor System
- Neat Meatt – Cultivated Chicken Meat Production
- MyoWorks – Mycelium Scaffolds, MilIcarriers & Cell Lines
- Mewery – Bioreactor-based Pork Meat Cultivation
- Meatly – Cultured Chicken-based Pet Food
Meet 10 out of 1.2K+ Emerging Clean Meat Companies
In this section, we spotlight 10 emerging cultured meat companies that offer advanced scaffold technologies, sophisticated bioreactor systems, cell culture supplements, and much more. These firms improve scalability, enhance texture, and ensure the nutritional value of lab-grown meat. Read on to explore more such innovative solutions enabling sustainable meat production!
Note on Signal Strength
One of the unique metrics we feature for each company is Signal Strength, a proprietary data point generated by our Discovery Platform. It gauges the extent to which a company’s influence has permeated the global ecosystem of startups, scaleups, and emerging companies. This proprietary metric serves as a valuable guidepost for understanding a company’s standing in the broader market landscape.
1. Peace of Meat
- Founding Year: 2019
- Employee Range: 11-50
- Location: Belgium
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Peace of Meat formulates cultured meat, namely Conscious Chicken and Delicious Duck through a bioreactor, utilizing a proprietary cell extraction technique. A small sample of stem cells, sourced from a chicken egg, initiates the process. The company then introduces these cells into a cultivator that mimics an animal’s internal environment. To nourish the cells, Peace of Meat supplies nutrients, vitamins, oxygen, and sugar. Over several weeks, the cells multiply and mature into muscle or fat cells. Finally, the company harvests the mature cells and processes them into meat products. This method eliminates the need for slaughtering animals and reduces environmental impact while still offering familiar chicken products to consumers.
2. Smart MCs
- Founding Year: 2021
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: Australia
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Smart MCs enhances cultured meat research with its cell cultivation and analysis solutions. Its biocompatible microcarriers utilize edible biopolymers and are customizable for stiffness, size, and surface chemistry. This allows researchers to precisely tailor growth conditions for various cell types. The company also offers fully defined hydrogels – animal-free and free of complex crosslinking – to provide a temperature-stable, three-dimensional environment for cell growth. Additionally, its microfluidic devices for cell sorting, single-cell analysis, and droplet generation, empower researchers with high-efficiency, precise manipulation, and analysis of small cell volumes.
3. ProFuse
- Founding Year: 2021
- Employee Range: 11-50
- Location: Israel
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: ProFuse engineers a cell culture supplement, PROFUSE-S1, that expedites muscle cell differentiation and maturation in cultured meat production. This supplement leverages a proprietary technology to activate a biochemical signaling pathway within muscle precursor cells. By targeting two distinct phases of myogenesis, PROFUSE-S1 accelerates differentiation and enhances myoblast fusion, resulting in faster production times and increased yields. The supplement functions across various species and cell types, including those used in 3D bioprinted cultured meat constructs. ProFuse thus enables cultured meat producers to reduce overall production costs by specifically targeting the differentiation and maturation stage, which significantly contributes to the total expense.
4. Alife
- Founding Year: 2021
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: Germany
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Alife cultivates meat for schnitzel by extracting myosatellite and muscle cells from cows via a veterinary procedure. These cells then proliferate in a controlled environment using a plant-based growth medium for up to four weeks. After this cultivation phase, the company employs its proprietary method to merge the mature cultured muscle cells with additional plant-based components to create their final schnitzel product. Alife thus offers cultured meat schnitzel as an alternative protein source for consumers concerned about animal welfare and environmental sustainability.
5. Atelier Meats
- Founding Year: 2021
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: USA
- Signal Strength: Strong
- What they do: Atelier Meats engineers cultured meat steaks using a proprietary scaffold technology. This scaffold serves as a base for culturing cow cells, allowing them to grow into thick, textured cuts. The company differentiates cell lines and utilizes bioprinting to create the desired tissue structure. Atelier Meats thus produces structured meats like steaks, employing a biocompatible scaffold that promotes cell attachment, proliferation, and crucially, alignment – mimicking the natural texture of meat.
6. Clever Carnivore
- Founding Year: 2021
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: USA
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Clever Carnivore cultivates meat using a bioreactor system. A tiny tissue sample from a cow, pig, or chicken provides the starting point for cell lines. These cells are cultured in a chemically defined growth medium, free of antibiotics and other contaminants, and monitored for optimal growth conditions. Clever Carnivore emphasizes cost-effectiveness and scalability, developing a commercially viable process for cultivated meat production. This addresses environmental and ethical concerns in the meat industry while targeting consumers seeking a sustainable, high-quality meat alternative.
7. Neat Meatt
- Founding Year: 2022
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: India
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Neat Meatt engineers a cost-effective, sustainable cultivated chicken meat production system. It uses non-GMO chicken cell lines and design of experiments (DOE) to optimize a chemically defined, serum-free growth medium and an in-house chicken serum isolation process for cell culture. Neat Meatt cultivates these cells within bioreactors and explores the use of edible scaffolds to enhance cell adherence, density, and viability during the process.
8. MyoWorks
- Founding Year: 2020
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: India
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: MyoWorks manufactures off-the-shelf biomaterials for cultivated meat producers. Its core product is a biocompatible, generally recognized as safe (GRAS) mycelium-based scaffold. This scaffold comes in 2D and 3D formats, featuring a microporous structure that mimics natural muscle tissue. These scaffolds enhance cell attachment, proliferation, and structured growth during cultivation. Furthermore, MyoWorks offers versatile millicarriers for efficient cell culture. By improving cell function and meat texture, these biomaterials enable cultivated meat companies to achieve higher production yields and superior product quality.
9. Mewery
- Founding Year: 2020
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: Czech Republic
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Mewery cultivates pork meat using bioreactor technology. It extracts muscle and stem cells, selecting the most suitable ones for growth. These cells are then placed in a proprietary microalgae-based serum-free medium, which mimics the animal’s natural environment to stimulate cell division and differentiation into muscle and fat cells. Mewery develops cultivators to provide a large-scale environment for efficient cell growth. The company then harvests the mature meat from the cultivators, resulting in a cruelty-free and slaughter-free meat product.
10. Meatly
- Founding Year: 2022
- Employee Range: 2-10
- Location: UK
- Signal Strength: Very Strong
- What they do: Meatly cultivates chicken meat for pet food using avian cell lines. It sources a single chicken egg for initial cell extraction, eliminating the need for further animal involvement. A proprietary, chemical-free growth medium actively provides essential nutrients for cell proliferation and differentiation into muscle tissue. Controlled bioreactors, similar to those used in yogurt or beer production, cultivate the cells. Meatly collaborates with pet food companies to develop and distribute their product line. This technology thus offers a sustainable and cruelty-free solution for the pet food industry.
Quick Tip to Find New Clean Meat Companies
Utilizing a SaaS platform like the Discovery Platform for identifying new clean meat companies provides significant benefits compared to traditional scouting methods:
- Increased Efficiency: The Discovery Platform offers advanced tools that streamline the scouting process. It replaces your hours of conventional desk research, saving time and resources in identifying cultured meat innovations.
- Access to Real-time Insights: Gain a competitive edge with up-to-date information on the latest trends in the lab-grown meat industry. The platform keeps you informed with near real-time updates on emerging clean meat companies and news, enabling you to make swift and informed decisions.
- Precise Scouting: Customize your search to focus on specific niches within the artificial meat sector, such as advanced scaffold technologies, bioreactor systems, or cultured meat research solutions. The platform’s diverse filtering options allow you to target your scouting efforts precisely, ensuring that you find the most relevant and groundbreaking companies in the field.
Ready to Explore All Clean Meat Companies?
We’ve explored the dynamic landscape of the clean meat industry, examining the latest trends and spotlighting exceptional companies driving innovation. To dive deeper, download our free Food Report or schedule a demo of the Discovery Platform for a customized exploration of these groundbreaking developments.
