By Mari Hansen The production figures inside Upside Foods’ gleaming Emeryville, California facility, which the company has referred to as a “factory of the future” in press materials, have been subtly revealing a different story. By 2021, the company wants its pilot plant to produce 50,000 pounds of farmed chicken. It failed to reach its destination. The goal was then set at 400,000 pounds. According to reports based on former workers who saw the disparity between the company’s declared goals and its actual output grow year after year, it hasn’t even come close to that. The gap between the marketing and the bioreactors has grown harder to justify for a startup that raised hundreds of millions of dollars on the promise of an impending meat revolution.
The cultivated meat industry came with a story that was both genuinely interesting and, from a scientific perspective, genuinely true. Take a tiny sample of an animal’s cells. Put them in a bioreactor with a growth medium that is rich in nutrients. Encourage them to proliferate, differentiate, and form the structures that give meat its distinct flavor and texture. No feedlots. Methane is absent. No mass slaughter. In the lab, the procedure was successful.
Key information — lab-grown meat industry crisis
| Industry overview | Cultivated meat — produced by extracting animal cells and growing them in bioreactors without slaughter; fewer than 100 startups active globally as of 2021 |
| Total investment raised | Over $1.6 billion in venture capital funding poured into lab-grown meat companies — investment grew sixfold in 2020 alone, with major backers including Tyson Foods, SoftBank, and Temasek |
| Core production problem | Scaling from lab-size to industrial output has proven far harder than anticipated — Upside Foods failed to reach its 2021 target of 50,000 pounds and has not come close to its stated goal of 400,000 pounds at its pilot plant |
| CEO’s own assessment | Uma Valeti, CEO of Upside Foods: “It’s like putting a man on the Moon. There’s no road map or blueprint” — Josh Tetrick of Eat Just acknowledged commercial-scale production remains uncertain within the next decade |
| Only approved market | Singapore remains the only country in the world to have approved the sale of lab-grown meat — Eat Just’s chicken product sold there is more than 70% cultivated cells blended with plant protein for structure |
| Cost trajectory | Production costs have fallen 99% since early prototypes — Israel’s Future Meat cut cultivated chicken costs from $7.50 to $4 per pound in four months in 2021, targeting below $2; cost parity with conventional meat projected no earlier than the early 2030s |
| Scale required | Reaching just 1% of the global protein market would require 220–440 million liters of fermentation capacity — the entire pharmaceutical industry currently has 10–20 million liters of cell-culture capacity |
| Sustainability profile | A CE Delft Life Cycle Assessment found cultivated meat produces over 75% lower CO2 emissions and uses significantly less land and water than conventional beef — comparable to chicken and pork when renewable energy is used |
| Plant-based parallel | Plant-based meat alternatives like Beyond Burger have already reached mass market — but struggled to hold consumer loyalty, raising questions about appetite for alternative proteins beyond early adopters |
| Expert outlook | TechCrunch analysis concluded that any goal placing cultivated meat in grocery stores or fast food menus during the 2020s is “unrealistic” — mainstream availability now projected for mid-2030s at the earliest |
In late 2020, diners at a high-end club in Singapore became the first people in the world to consume cultivated chicken that had been approved for commercial sale; by most accounts, it tasted like chicken. This was a small demonstration of how it worked. Investment came next. Tyson Foods, SoftBank, and Temasek were among the investors who contributed more than $1.6 billion to the industry, viewing it as the next frontier in food production. According to McKinsey, the market might grow to $25 billion by 2030.
It now appears that that projection was based on outdated assumptions. It is not a biological issue at its core. It is both engineering and economic, and the two support one another in ways that are steadfastly defying the conventional startup playbook of capital deployment and iteration. The industry would require between 220 and 440 million liters of fermentation capacity to supply even 1% of the world’s protein market with farmed meat.
Approximately 10 to 20 million liters are currently used by the entire global pharmaceutical industry, which uses similar cell-culture technology to produce drugs rather than food. More venture capital does not swiftly bridge the gap between the industry’s current state and what it must be to matter at scale. It calls for a capital build-out that no one has yet successfully funded, in facilities that don’t yet exist, and using manufacturing processes that are still in the design stage.
“It’s like putting a man on the Moon,” said Uma Valeti, CEO of Upside Foods, in a candid statement that investors were likely bracing to hear. There isn’t a blueprint or road map. When asked about scaling, Josh Tetrick of Eat Just, the only business that has successfully sold cultivated meat on a commercial basis, was similarly measured. “What is uncertain is whether we and other companies will be able to produce this at the largest of scales, at the lowest of costs within the next decade,” he stated. Confidence checks are not prompted by statements like these. These are the kinds of claims that, when made out loud by the CEOs of the industry’s leading businesses, explain why investment has started to decline and analysts have begun to label grocery-store availability in the 2020s as “unrealistic.”
The plant-based meat industry, which followed a similar path a little earlier, offers a helpful comparison. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat entered the market with tremendous momentum, sincere consumer interest, and the kind of early-adopter zeal that can be mistaken for widespread demand. They reached grocery shelves and fast food menus, successfully scaled production, and then encountered a wall of consumer apathy, or more accurately, a ceiling of consumer interest among the particular group that had always been interested, combined with a larger group that tried the products but didn’t love them enough to change their habits. The comparison isn’t entirely accurate; it’s important to note that cultivated meat tastes more like traditional meat than plant protein. However, it’s important to be aware of the tendency to overestimate how quickly adoption proceeds once the technology passes its initial stages.
The expenses have significantly decreased since the beginning. According to reports, production costs have decreased by 99% from early prototypes, which is a truly remarkable technological accomplishment. In just four months in 2021, Israel’s Future Meat was able to reduce the price of cultivated chicken breasts from $7.50 to $4 per pound, and within eighteen months, they anticipated costs to drop below $2 per pound. On grocery shelves, however, a pound of traditional chicken breast costs between $1.50 and $2. The math still doesn’t close, and closing it at industrial scale while preserving the sterile conditions that make the process safe, locating the sophisticated growth media that cells need, and developing the bioreactor capacity that doesn’t yet exist is a set of concurrent issues that no single funding round can resolve.
It’s difficult not to feel a little sorry for the engineers and researchers who have dedicated years of their lives to solving a legitimately significant problem. Alternatives to traditional meat production have a strong environmental case. The production of beef uses water and land, produces emissions, and depends on the use of antibiotics at scales that have a significant impact on public health. Regarding the issue it is attempting to resolve, the cultivated meat industry is correct.
It might simply have been overconfidence in the speed at which the solution would materialize due to a combination of investor excitement and competitive pressure to demonstrate momentum. Engineering was not as advanced as science. The engineering is currently far behind schedule for the investment. Additionally, investors are starting to make their own judgments based on the gap.