Multus Biotechnology, a U.K.-based start-up creating ingredients for the affordable scale-up of cellular agriculture, has completed a £7.9 million ($9.5 million) funding round led by Mandi Ventures.
Other investors include SOSV, Big Idea Ventures and SynBioVen, alongside Asahi Kasei, a global company that contributes to a sustainable society by tackling evolving challenges in materials, homes and healthcare.
An equity-free grant of £2.15 million ($2.5 million) from Innovate UK through the EIC Accelerator also makes up the Series A round.
The funding will allow Multus Biotechnology to build a production plant in the U.K. to accelerate the cultivated meat industry towards price parity with affordable food-safe growth media at commercial scale. It will also accelerate product development in advanced growth media formulations and food-grade raw materials.
This week’s funding follows a $2.2 million raise in 2021 and the launch of the company’s first product, Proliferum® M, an all-in-one solution to eliminate the use of fetal bovine serum in cell culture.
Multus Biotechnology’s approach: a sustainable alternative
Multus Biotechnology combines data science and automation to screen its library of non-conventional growth media ingredients to unlock affordable, high-performance growth media formulations that are scalable. Multus Biotechnology said it enables a sustainable alternative to intensive animal farming, which it argues continues to erode biodiversity, monopolize arable land, and emit high levels of greenhouse gasses.
The company’s growth media formulations and ingredients are the building blocks of cellular agriculture and enable the affordable at-scale production of real animal products, including meat, dairy, leather, and more, using cells instead of animals.
Multus Biotechnology CEO Cai Linton said: “We are excited to use this funding to drive innovation in novel ingredient discovery, intelligent formulation design and food safe growth media production for the affordable scale-up of the cellular agriculture industry.”
“We are confident that our unique approach to growth media will play a key role in making cultivated meat a sustainable and affordable choice for all.”
Julio Benetti, co-founder and managing partner at Mandi Ventures said: “Multus’ technology has the potential to revolutionize the cultivated meat industry by significantly reducing production costs and accelerating the commercial scale-up of the sector, benefiting cultivated meat producers, consumers and the environment.”
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