It wasn’t long ago that cultivated meat was awash with capital, with investors scrambling to get into oversubscribed funding rounds. At its peak, almost $1bn was invested in a single year. A bold move, given that at that point, in 2021, cultivated meat had received very few regulatory green lights; most countries had yet to deem it safe for consumption.
Fast forward to today, and the landscape feels markedly different. Since 2021, investment in cultivated meat has plummeted. On the upside for cell-based innovators, regulatory approvals have expanded, and consumers have finally been able to try products once confined to science fiction: real meat, produced without slaughter.
And yet, despite these advances, the sector is under strain. Cultivated meat players are folding, making the difficult decision to cease operations altogether. Amid a cell-based shakeout, who is closing their doors and why?
Believer Meats
- Headquarters: Chicago, US
- Years operating: 2018-2025
- Flagship technology: Cultivated chicken
- Regulatory approval? Yes, in US
Israeli-founded Believer Meats, formerly Future Meat Technologies, announced it was shutting up shop in late 2025. The company had made headway on its path to commercialisation, first moving from Israel to the US before setting up a manufacturing facility in North Carolina capable of producing 12,000 tonnes of cultivated chicken per year. Believer made headlines by becoming the first foreign company to secure US regulatory approval for a cultivated meat product.
Taking to social media, the company’s global VP of talent and human resources Anne Schubert said the outcome was “not what any of us hoped for”. No further explanation was given, but rumours of financial struggles and an attempt to secure eleventh-hour funding, followed by mass layoffs, were reported by AgFunder News.
Meatable
- Headquarters: Delft, Netherlands
- Years operating: 2018-2025
- Flagship technology: Cultivated pork
- Regulatory approval? No
Dutch cultivated pork maker Meatable made the decision to cease operations in late 2025. The news was announced by shareholder Agronomics, which explained the company was unable to secure funding to continue operations. Just months prior, Meatable acquired Uncommon Bio’s cultivated meat platform, which it had hoped would diversify its portfolio beyond pork and beef, into lamb and chicken.
CellRev
- Headquarters: Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
- Years operating: 2018-2025
- Flagship technology: Media for cell manufacturing
- Regulatory approval? N/A
Newcastle University spin-out CellRev, short for CellulaREvolution, did not make its own cultivated meat products. Instead, it developed proprietary media additives for cell manufacturing, including cultivated meat. In August 2025, CEO Chris Green revealed the company would be shutting up shop. Although proud of CellRev’s achievements – the company developed the first continuous adherent cell manufacturing platform with evidence of 60 days of continuous culturing – he acknowledged CellRev couldn’t deliver commercial milestones in time to secure Series A investment.
Upstream Foods
- Headquarters: Wageningen, Netherlands
- Years operating: 2022-2025
- Flagship technology: Cultivated fish fat
- Regulatory approval? No
Upstream Foods’ strategy was to develop cultivated fish fat, starting with salmon, to improve the taste of plant-based seafood. But after just three years, CEO Kianti Figler called it a day. “Bringing a cultivated product to the market is no easy feat,” she said in an online post mid-2025. “We are building an industry from scratch, completely rethinking our food system from the ground up, and we cannot deny that there are significant barriers to entry.” Ultimately, the decision to wind up operations was a financial one: “We need more capital than we are currently able to raise.”
SCiFi Foods
- Headquarters: San Francisco, US
- Years operating: 2019-2024
- Flagship technology: Hybrid cultivated beef and plant protein burger
- Regulatory approval? No
Originally founded as Artemys Foods, SciFi Foods was taking a hybrid approach to cultivated meat. The Californian company was working on a burger – the “SCiFi Burger” – made from a blend of cultivated beef and plant proteins, but in mid-2024 announced it was calling it a day. “Unfortunately, in this funding environment, we could not raise the capital that we needed to commercialise the SciFi burger, and SCiFi Foods ran out of time,” noted its founders in a statement.
SCiFi Foods’ cell lines and growth media were acquired by alternative proteins advocate the Good Food Institute, and through a partnership with Tufts University has made them available for public use. It’s hoped the move can save academia and industry “millions”, and remove major barriers to entry for new innovators. It marks the first time suspension-adapted bovine cell lines will be available for cultivated meat researchers around the world.
Consolidation in cultivated
A special mention must go to consolidation in the cultivated meat and seafood sector, a trend that continues to grow amid the cultivated shakeout. Some have already been mentioned, notably Meatable’s acquisition of Uncommon Bio’s cultivated meat platform and the Good Food Institute’s buyout of SCiFi Foods’ cell lines and growth media.
In 2024, cultivated meat company Umami Bioworks announced a merger with cell-based seafood operator Shiok Meats in Singapore, and in 2025, French lab-grown poultry start-up Gourmey (best known for its cultivated foie gras) merged with another French operator, Vital Meat. The new entity is known as Parima.
As the sector continues to slim down, it’s becoming clearer which business models can withstand the pressure of long development timelines, high capital demands, and an uncertain funding environment. Whether through shutdowns, pivots, or mergers, companies are reassessing their paths in a rapidly changing landscape. We’ll be watching closely to see which players adapt, consolidate, or ultimately find a sustainable route forward in cultivated meat’s next chapter.
