Cultivated meat startup Orbillion Bio announces it is partnering with Solar Biotech, a leader in SynBio bioprocessing, to further develop and scale production of premium cultivated Wagyu beef for US consumers. The partners plan to scale to 20,000L bioreactors, which will be capable of producing over 4 million pounds of meat every year.
According to Orbillion, the strategic partnership reinforces their commitment to achieve price parity with conventional meat by 2026 and commodity pricing for beef by 2030.
“Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cell-cultured beef”
Through the collaboration, Orbillion states it now has a clear path to US commercialization of its first product, cultivated Wagyu beef. The effort will combine Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess software, biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering. The partnership also takes advantage of Solar’s previous experience commercializing mammalian cell cultures for animal-free meat.
Since its facilities are water-neutral and fully powered by solar energy, Orbillion asserts it will be the first cultivated meat company to truly achieve the emissions and sustainability goals expected of cell-cultured meats.

Cost competitive
Specializing in cultivating heritage breed meats such as Wagyu, elk and lamb, Orbillion is now positioning itself to become a global leader in cultivated beef. In September, the company partnered with Dutch specialty meats distributor Lutein to bring its meats to Europe by 2025. The company has raised $9M in funding thus far.
“Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cell-cultured beef, while being cost competitive,” said Patricia Bubner, CEO of Orbillion. “Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity.”

“World-class bioprocessing”
This partnership marks Solar Biotech’s first entry into cultivated beef after working successfully with animal-free chicken. With its state-of-the-art bioprocessing technology, the company aims to reimagine the way high-value products are manufactured.
“At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech,” says Alex Berlin, CEO and CTO of Solar Biotech. “We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team.”

He added, “We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins. They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market.”