IntegriCulture – the Japanese cultivated meat commercialization specialist – has raised $7 million in Series A-plus funding. The company will use the funds in its development of affordable growth media and other tech solutions for the cellular agriculture sector.
Striving to bring down costs for emerging cultivated meat companies, IntegriCulture is developing ‘outside-factor-free’ cellular agriculture tech, which could even one day be used in the home. The recent $7 million in Series A-plus funding brings IntegriCulture’s total funding to date to $16.4 million.
Although cultivated meat production costs are falling rapidly, it remains prohibitively expensive as a commercial enterprise. IntegriCulture addresses that with its CulNet System – a universally accessible platform for growth media production. In an interview with vegconomist, IntegriCulture founder Yuki Hanyu explained that in the CulNet System, “The growth hormone that is purchased from the outside with conventional cultured meat, that is, collected from animals, is made inside the machine.”
Commercial launch
Following a successful collaboration to upscale Shiok Meat’s cultivated line, IntegriCulture is aiming to launch its first consumer food product later this year; a cultivated foie gras. The Series A-plus funding included new investors, as well as existing ones like AgFunder and Beyond Next Ventures.
“The technical development IntegriCulture has achieved over the past 18 months has been impressive, and we truly believe that their CulNet System can be an industry-defining technology and drive the future of sustainable, high-quality protein production,” Michael Dean, founding partner of AgFunder told AgFunderNews.
