February 19, 2025
Deal Dive: A cellular ag startup with a real moat

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Would you eat lab-grown meat? If someone asked you to use a beauty product that had lab-grown collagen as an ingredient, would you give the same answer?

Cellular agriculture – the process of growing agricultural products from cell cultures – has been gaining momentum in the past few years. Earlier this year, the US Food and Drug Administration approved Upside Foods and Good Meat’s plan to sell lab-grown chicken through restaurants. Both companies, in addition to several other cellular agriculture startups, have raised large amounts of venture dollars.

Of course, the rise of cellular agriculture hasn’t been linear and easy, and not everyone is crazy about it. Italy, on the one hand, is working to ban the stuff entirely, and various surveys have given mixed results about whether people would actually eat lab-grown meat.

But not everyone is using the technology to create another alternative to meat.

Stephanie Michelson first realized the potential of cellular agriculture when she was working in the field of alternative proteins. When he started thinking about it further, he realized there might be an overlooked opportunity: use cases for animal proteins like gelatin and collagen go beyond the realm of food.

“I started thinking about the barriers to moving toward an animal-free future. If tomorrow all animal culture disappears, what will disappear? What do we not have a solution for? Michelsen said. “To me, it was the byproducts that are only found in these animals. That’s how I got to collagen.

Cultured collagen is the basis of his startup Zellatec, which was founded in 2020 and recently raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Founders VC, with participation from Milano Investment Partners and Joyful VC, among others.

Gelatech stands out in an increasingly crowded cellular agriculture sector because it’s tapping a bigger opportunity than some of its seafood- and meat-focused counterparts.

Source: techcrunch.com

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