Dutch startup Mosa Meat just raised $55 million in new funding.

Alternative meat startup Mosa Meat, which harvests beef directly from cow cells, rather than raising and slaughtering a whole animal, announced its Series B fundraising of $ 55 million. The amount was a first closing – part of a larger series B funding round.

Led by Luxembourg-based Blue Horizon Ventures, the round was joined by Bell Food Group, M Ventures, and others.

Mosa’s lab-grown meat

Mosa Meat announced the world’s first lab-grown meat burger in 2013, following years of research and cost of € 250,000. The tab for that was footed by Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL).

The company has come a long way since that first successful effort to create cultured meat or clean meat. It has achieved impressive scientific breakthroughs and brought down the price of its meat.

According to Sifted, Mosa has been able to slash the cost of a burger down by 88 times compared to its cost in 2013.

It was able to do that by replacing fetal bovine serum (FBS), an essential input for growing the cow cells, with a pharmaceutical equivalent.

A burger now could cost just € 9.

Use of funds

The new funding will go to financing the expansion of its current pilot production facility at Maastricht. It will also be used to develop an industrial-sized production line.

Mosa Meat also wants to expand its team and bring its cultured beef to market.

“In the next 3 years, we aim to scale up to one industrial-sized production line, work with regulators to demonstrate the safety of cultivated meat, and introduce the first cultivated beef to consumers,” Mosa Meat’s head of production Sarah Lucas told Sifted.

World’s new-found interest in alternative meat

In recent months, particularly around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, people experimented with, and light, meat alternatives from companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible. Interest has grown in sustainable options that are kind to animals and the planet, such as the clean beef from Mosa Meat.

Tesco announced today that it has set a 300% sales target for plant-based alternatives to meat. Over the past year, the change found that demand for chilled meat-free foods surged by almost 50%.

The Washington Post reported September 21 that tofu met with record demand during the pandemic due to a spike in interest in healthy and affordable proteins amidst economic difficulties. According to Nielsen data, sales of tofu were 40% higher in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period last year.

Related Story:   Impossible Foods Raises $200M; Vegan Pork On The Way