Cultivated meat survivors overview: Which companies remain?
- Sector faces high costs, regulation challenges, investor pullback and uncertain demand
- Aleph Farms pursues hybrid steak strategy after Israel approval 2024
- Mosa Meat advances EU approval via cultivated fat led entry
- Parima merger targets scale solving infrastructure bottlenecks across multiple markets
- Vow and Meatly focus innovation approvals and cost reduction pathways
Cultivated meat is a notoriously difficult sector in which to operate.
Production is expensive, attaining regulatory approval is difficult, and investors are increasingly losing interest. And that’s all before the industry has ascertained whether consumers will actually buy the products.
Many major players in cultivated meat, including Believer Meats, Meatable, and SciFi Foods, have now shut up shop. But a few big names remain.
Aleph Farms
Founded in 2017, Israeli start-up Aleph Farms is one of the most recognisable names in the cultivated meat space.
Aleph Farms is chiefly focused on steak, and achieved regulatory approval for its cultivated steak product in Israel in 2024. It was also the first company to submit applications in the UK and Switzerland.
The company, which has in the past received investment from figures such as actor Leonardo DiCaprio, blends its cultivated meat with hybrid products; essentially hybrid meat, but with cultivated instead of animal-sourced.
This is not simply a cost-cutting exercise, but is very deliberate. CEO Didier Toubia suggests that for cultivated meat to be successful, it shouldn’t be a one-to-one replacement for meat itself, but have a unique value proposition.
Mosa Meat
Dutch cultivated beef company Mosa Meat, founded in 2016, is one of the earliest players in the sector.
The company is one of a handful to have submitted an application for regulatory approval in the EU, in this case for its beef fat product.
By releasing cultivated fat, says CEO Maarten Bosch, the company is paving the way for introducing consumers to a fully fledged cultivated burger.
Working for the Dutch company is one of cultivated meat’s most well-known figures: Mark Post, who created the first cultivated burger, is its CSO and co-founder.
Parima
Parima began life as two French companies: Gourmey, which produced cultivated duck products for foie gras, and Vital Meat, which produced cultivated chicken.
Now one company, Parima, which consolidated just last year, has both of these products under its umbrella.
By joining forces, the merged company combines the infrastructure of two start-ups, aiming to solve the common problem of cultivated meat companies: upscaling.
The company has several applications pending regulatory approval, including in the EU, US, Switzerland and UK for cultivated foie gras (submitted by Gourmey before the merger, the EU application was the bloc’s first for cultivated meat). It has also seen approvals in Singapore for cultivated duck and chicken.
Vow
Australia’s Vow is perhaps most well-known for its developing cultivated meat from unusual animals.
Rather than just going with beef or chicken, Vow has developed cultivated foie gras, cultivated quail parfait and even cultivated woolly mammoth meatballs.
But alongside its radical choices of animals, the company, which was founded in 2019, is also serious. By creating entirely new types of meat, says CEO George Peppou, the company aims to give meat eaters something they can’t get elsewhere, rather than simply providing a substitute for everyday meat.
Vow recently gained regulatory approval in its home country of Australia. It was previously approved in Singapore, Hong Kong, the US and Israel.
Meatly
Meatly is the first and, as yet, only company to achieve regulatory approval in Europe, getting the green light in the UK in 2024. The caveat is, it’s for pet food.
The UK company, founded in 2022, was able to get an approval through in its home country, whose novel food regulation is known to be stringent. In the UK, the regulatory burden is significantly lighter for pet food.
However, CEO Owen Ensor has not ruled out producing meat aimed at human beings.
The company is also focused on cost-reduction, announcing that it had cut the cost of its cell-culture medium by 80% in 2025.
