An East Bay lab-grown meat startup that was developing a ground beef alternative is shutting down.
Known as SciFi Foods, the San Leandro-based company was working on a hamburger product that contained around 10% to 20% cultivated beef protein but recently "appointed an advisory firm to run a sale process," co-founder and CEO Joshua March told AgFunderNews, which first reported the news.
It's unclear whether SciFi is selling off proprietary technology, real estate or other assets. A search for bankruptcy filings in California from SciFi Foods and Artemys Inc., the company's legal name, turned up zero results.
March and SciFi did not respond to an emailed request for more information on Tuesday.
The company raised at least $29 million as of mid-2023, the San Francisco Business Times reported last year. According to AgFunder, SciFi had raised around $40 million.
Its investors included Andreessen Horowitz, BoxGroup, Entree Capital and Prelude Ventures.
So-called cultivated meat has garnered media attention and investor interest but faces a bevy of challenges that include regulatory hurdles and achieving scalability for mass-market sales.
Only two companies have approval in the U.S. to sell cultivated meat: Eat Just and Upside Foods, which have both developed a chicken alternative.
Eat Just and Upside Foods launched their chicken products on a small scale with restaurants last year.
In May, Eat Just also launched its first consumer retail product through its subsidiary, Good Meat. It was a mostly plant-based product containing 3% of its cultivated chicken and is only available in Singapore.
"Using a smaller percentage of cultivated chicken in combination with plant proteins ... helps reduce costs associated with the production of cultivated meat, one of the main challenges that exist to scaling this developing industry," the company explained at the time.
In the last three months of 2023, alternative protein was the second most-funded segment within foodtech with $462 million raised, beat only by e-commerce with $478 million in total funding, according to a recent PitchBook report. However, those figures were down around 41% and 62% over the previous quarter, respectively.
