Mosa Meat Raises $55M in Series B Funding to Make the Future of Meat

Update: In December 2020, Mosa Meat announced an additional $20 million in Series B funding and another $10 million in February 2021 to raise a total of $85 million in Series B funding.

This week, Mosa Meat announced the company raised a massive $55 million (EUR 47M) in its Series B funding round. Based in Maastricht, Netherlands, Mosa Meat uses cellular agriculture to produce cell-based meat. Cellular agriculture is the field of producing animal products, like meat, directly from cell cultures instead of raising animals for the same products. By growing animal cells to become meat directly, Mosa Meat aims to provide a sustainable way to meet the global demand for animal products. Without requiring animals.

Investment

Mosa Meat’s Series B financing was led by Blue Horizon Ventures. The funding round also featured investors from Bell Food Group, M Ventures, and other mission-driven groups. 

The funding round brings Mosa Meat’s total disclosed funding to $63.8 million. In July 2018, Mosa Meat raised $8.8 million (EUR 7.5M) in Series A funding.

Mosa Meat is the second cell-based meat startup to raise a Series B round. In January, Memphis Meats announced a massive $161 million in its Series B funding round.

Interestingly, Mosa Meat's Series B is the largest funding round for a European cellular agriculture company, and the funding round more than doubles all disclosed investments into European cellular agriculture companies to date.

It’s promising to see M Ventures, the venture arm of Germany pharmaceutical company Merck, invest in Mosa Meat’s Series B to continue supporting the pioneering company. As one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, Merck’s expertise in cell culturing and scaling production may be invaluable for Mosa Meats.

Scaling to Build the Future of Food

The funding announcement continues Mosa Meat’s great summer. 

In July, along with announcing Bell Food’s investment in the Series B funding round, Mosa Meat shared that the startup successfully removed fetal bovine serum from its media and reduced the price of its animal-free cell culture media 88 times since September 2019. 

The development of an inexpensive and animal-free cell culture media has once been described as the Holy Grail for cellular agriculture companies, and it’s promising to see Mosa Meat to continue to achieve its milestones to make scaling cellar agriculture production feasible and affordable.

In June, Mosa Meat moved into their new pilot plant facility in Maastricht. Pilot plant development is an important stepping stone for cell-based meat companies to validate how their production process will look like before moving to a larger facility, and Mosa Meat plans to produce their first products for market in this facility in the years to come.

Conclusion

Mosa Meat plans to use the funding round to expand its team, extend its pilot plant facility, and develop an industrial-sized production line. In addition, Dr. Regina Hecker from Blue Horizon Ventures will join Mosa Meat’s Board of Directors and will assist Mosa Meat in a range of areas, most notably scaling and regulation. 

Before introducing its cell-based beef to customers, Mosa Meat plans to work with European regulators to demonstrate the safety of its cell-based meat in order to receive regulatory approval for its novel product. Government regulation has been a major question moving forward, particularly for cell-based meat companies, and it will be important for Mosa Meat and other European players to clearly communicate the benefits of their technology to improve our food system.

Mosa Meat’s Series B funding round continues a year of large funding rounds for cellular agriculture companies. Following Memphis Meat’s Series B, Perfect Day raised $300 million in its Series C round and Geltor raised $91.3 million in Series B funding in July. 

Including Mosa Meat’s latest funding round, the total funding in cellular agriculture companies focusing on food has surpassed $1 billion, of which approximately half was raised in 2020 alone.