Welcoming new partners on our journey
We are very pleased to announce we are welcoming new and existing partners to help bring cultivated beef to consumers, as part of €40M in new capital we raised today to finance our next phase. The funds will be used to further scale up our production processes, drive down the cost of production and prepare for market entry.
The oversubscribed round was led by Lowercarbon Capital and M Ventures. We also welcome Invest-NL, the Dutch state-owned impact investor, partly with coverage by InvestEU, the European Commission program supporting initiatives that align with EU policy priorities, and LIOF, the regional development agency for the Limburg province as well as the Limburg Energy Fund (LEF), the regional fund supporting greenhouse gas emissions reduction. New partners with a background in the conventional meat sector were also added, including the PHW Group, one of Europe’s largest poultry producers. Furthermore, XO Ventures, Doux Investments and other new investors joined existing investors to create a more diverse and resilient food system together.
Our CEO, Maarten said: “The overall macroeconomic landscape has been rough in the last two years, which has culled the herd of companies and forced us to be even more strategic and focused on achieving our mission. As such, we are humbled and honoured to welcome both public parties and conventional meat producers to join this critical journey. In an environment that is increasingly polarised, we choose to connect and collaborate, working towards a future where cultivated beef is a real choice for consumers and a complementary solution in the toolbox to combat the climate crisis, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity. Rethinking how we produce great food for a growing planet without destroying it is quite a daunting task and will take many people and organisations to pull in the same direction.”
After opening and successfully starting production in our scale-up facility and after becoming a B Corp last year, we are currently preparing the first formal tastings of our cultivated beef in The Netherlands.
The InvestEU programme provides the European Union with crucial long-term funding by leveraging substantial private and public funds in support of a sustainable recovery. It also helps mobilise private investments for the European Union's policy priorities, such as the European Green Deal and the digital transition. The InvestEU programme brings together under one roof the multitude of EU financial instruments currently available to support investment in the European Union, making funding for investment projects in Europe simpler, more efficient and more flexible. The programme consists of three components: the InvestEU Fund, the InvestEU Advisory Hub and the InvestEU Portal. The InvestEU Fund is implemented through financial partners that will invest in projects using the EU budget guarantee of €26.2 billion. The entire budget guarantee will back the investment projects of the implementing partners, increase their risk-bearing capacity and thus mobilise at least €372 billion in additional investment.
