Eat Just has revealed that its Good Meat division has secured US$97 million in new funding, adding to the initial US$170 million publicized in May. Good Meat will use the funds to increase capacity and accelerate R&D for high-quality, real meat made directly from animal cells.

The overall US$267 million fundraise is the largest to date in the burgeoning cultivated meat sector, which analysts predict could become a US$25 billion global industry by 2030.

Expanding its team
Meanwhile, the company added two food and agriculture leaders to its ranks. 

Dan Glickman will serve on its Advisory Board; and Jim Borel, former executive vice president of DuPont, will join its board of directors. 

Glickman served as US Secretary of Agriculture from March 1995 until January 2001; spent nearly two decades as a member of the US House of Representatives; and is actively involved with organizations that fight domestic and global hunger and promote agricultural research in pursuit of a safer, more sustainable food system. 

The overall US$267 million fundraise is the largest to date in the burgeoning cultivated meat sector.Borel, who during his four-decade career at DuPont led its DuPont Pioneer, Crop Protection and Nutrition & Health businesses, is also on Eat Just’s board of directors.

“I’m proud to see our company take the next step toward building large-scale cultivated meat production. This investment, along with the guidance of Secretary Glickman and Jim Borel, puts us in a position to execute our plans in multiple regions around the world,” says Josh Tetrick, co-founder and CEO of Eat Just, the parent company of Good Meat. 

While I will always support family farmers’ work to feed the world in the US and elsewher, this company’s innovative technologies can augment opportunities over the longer term for consumers to expand their choices and improve their diets,” says Glickman.

New and previously announced investors include UBS O’Connor, a hedge fund manager within UBS Asset Management; Graphene Ventures; K3 Ventures; Resilience Reserve, a venture capital fund founded by entrepreneur Rob Reid and TED curator Chris Anderson; businessman Fernando Chico Pardo and others. ABG, LLC; BofA Securities, Inc.; Guggenheim Securities and VERSO Capital advised on the transaction.

Previous strides in cultivated meat
The investment and additions of Glickman and Borel follow Good Meat’s announcement earlier this month that it plans to build the first-ever cultivated meat facility in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region through a partnership with Doha Venture Capital and Qatar Free Zones Authority. 

In March, Eat Just announced a US$200 million round, and in late 2020, the company secured the first-in-the-world regulatory approval of cultivated meat in Singapore.