The B2B value chain for cultured meat

The B2B value-chain for cultured meat

Having recently made the leap into consulting and advising after 4 years working directly in cellular agriculture, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to speak to many founders, operators, and leaders in the broader biomanufacturing space 🌱. My conversations have also extended to investors, diving deep into what exactly piques their interest 💼.

The biggest surprise for me was the current reluctance to invest in pre-seed and seed cultured meat companies 🚀. It seems the space is perceived as saturated, with investors preferring to wait and see how the existing companies tackle the three big challenges: getting products to market, building consumer demand, and effectively scaling 📈. While this approach is understandable, it seems a bit like a missed opportunity with the advantages afforded the next wave of companies.

Consider the new cultured meat startups today and the immense advantage they hold. Even just five years ago, the infrastructure to support this industry was practically non-existent. Companies had to build everything from scratch - cell lines, media, bioprocesses, you name it. And whatever infrastructure or B2B components that did exist were designed for biopharma, meaning they were prohibitively expensive 💰.

But let’s look at the situation for a B2C cultured meat company starting in 2024 🌟. They can purchase or license almost all of the building blocks needed to start producing prototypes from day one. The value is no longer in building each step in-house (which remains prohibitively expensive in both time and money), but rather in how you assemble these different pieces together 🧩. Companies that can effectively link these blocks together so that the sum is greater than the parts will likely have a tremendous advantage and could rapidly catch or surpass those that are near market.

To illustrate this point, I’ve created an end-to-end value chain for B2B companies that not only focuses on cultured meat but shows how the value provided by these companies can be applied to virtually any bio-manufactured product. What’s even more exciting is that less than half of these companies existed five years ago 🔍.

I’m truly excited about the future of cultured meat and even more so for the incredibly cool tech that’s being developed to support this growing industry 🚀🌿. I’m certain that I have missed multiple companies and probably even categories, so please comment and link any companies who should be included. Rumors of its death are much exaggerated, the cultured meat revolution has only just begun!