Meat that doesn’t require the slaughter of animals. Fashion that provides an eco-friendly alternative to leather. Dairy products that are lactose-free and brewed in a lab.
Most San Franciscans aren’t aware that there’s a lab right in the heart of the financial district where scientists and entrepreneurs are working on all these things and more. The lab, which is run by a bio-technology accelerator program called IndieBio, has funded 68 early-stage start-ups thus far.
One of its biggest successes, Memphis Meats, raised $17 million this past month for its “clean” bioreactor-brewed meat from a slew of high-profile investors, including billionaires Bill Gates and Richard Brandon, Elon Musk’s brother Kimball and General Electric CEO Jack Welch.
IndieBio was Memphis Meat’s first investor.
Andrew Evers, CNBC
CNBC’s Christina Farr gets a tour of IndieBio’s lab
“How we think of it is that first we domesticated cows and now we’re domesticating their cells,” said IndieBio’s program director Ryan Bethencourt, in an interview with CNBC. Memphis Meats’ process involves harvesting meat cells from live animals and growing them in a lab for more than a month.
Bethencourt said he’s perennially on the hunt to fund “alternatives from the use of animals, food, fashion consumer goods.” IndieBio provides $250,000 in funding to its portfolio companies, as well as desk-space and access to the lab.
Eating food brewed in a lab might seem like science fiction, but Bethencourt stresses that it’s a process that humans have used for years with household products like Tofu. But IndieBio’s companies are designing fish, meat and other animal products to feel and taste no different to their farmed counterparts.
He takes exception to the idea that these products are “fake.”
“Our focus is on making healthy nutritious food,” he said.