Cultivated meat company Evolved Meats secures CAD 2m in funding

Canadian cultured meat start-up, Evolved Meats, has raised CAD 2 million (approx. $1.6 million) in a seed funding round led by Maple Leaf Foods.

The funds will be used to accelerate Evolved Meats’ product development and support the initial scale-up of its production processes. The company’s technology enables the creation of whole cuts of meat that are “structurally and biochemically identical to conventional cuts of meat butchered from animals”.

Evolved’s “species agnostic” platform can be used to grow a variety of products, such as steak, pork belly, chicken breast and fish fillets.

The seed round received participation from Big Idea Ventures, a global protein venture capital fund, Garage Capital, Saltagen Ventures, the University of Waterloo’s Velocity Fund and angel investors.

Evolved Meats CEO, Alireza Shahin, said: “Our ambition is to recreate meat in a way that is identical to nature by biofabricating functional muscle tissues and capturing the entire muscle to meat transition. The proprietary technologies underlying our modular system allow us to do exactly that. However, recreating whole cuts of meat is only part of the challenge.”

He continued: “Our unique ability to create functional tissues will help us scale out our production while driving towards price parity with conventional meat. This mix of familiar cuts and affordable prices will enable Evolved to lead a massive transformation of the food system, and we are excited to work with Maple Leaf Foods and Big Idea Ventures to usher in that change.”

Big Idea Ventures founder and managing general partner, Andrew Ive, added: “Evolved Meats are working to solve important scale-up challenges to cell-based meats. By removing the need for scaffolding, Evolved Meats technology breaks down not one but several barriers in the cultivated meat production process and makes non-processed meat cuts possible.”

Evolved Meats co-founder and COO, John Cappuccitti, added: “We have a once in a generation opportunity to reimagine our relationship with natural food, and we owe it to ourselves, the planet and nature to make sure we do things sustainably. By creating whole cuts of meat directly from cells, we are enabling consumers to enjoy meat without compromise.”