SCiFi Foods, which aggressively promised to debut cultured meats faster than even competitors with USDA and FDA approvals, is out of business -- after raising $40 million from investors.
Cofounder and CEO Joshua March told AgFunderNews, “Given challenges in the fundraising market, we’ve appointed an advisory firm to run a sale process,” apparently referring to a liquidation of its assets.
Reports said the San Leandro, Calif.-based firm – which started life as Artemys Foods in 2019 -- had raised about $40 million from a number of venture capital funds and even British rock bank Coldplay. The company rebranded as SCiFi Foods in 2022.
SCiFi did have two differentiators. Rather than simply culturing meat from animal cells in a bioreactor, they also employed CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), a DNA-modifying technology that hastened the process. And their recent promotional remarks promised hybrid burgers made of perhaps 10% cultured meat, with the rest being plant-based protein.
