Upside Foods

Overview

Pioneer in cultivated (lab-grown) meat and one of only two US companies, alongside Good Meat, to have gained USDA regulatory approval for cell-based meat products (June 2023), backed by $611 million in total funding. Facing a challenging funding environment, Upside paused construction of its Rubicon cell-based production facility in Glenview, Illinois in 2024 to refocus resources on doubling investment in its existing EPIC production site in California, and has more recently cut jobs amid the same funding pressure. The company gained wide public exposure when creator MrBeast toured its production site and could not distinguish its cultivated chicken from conventional chicken in a taste test.

Strategic Connections

Strategic Risks

• Cultivated meat sector broadly faces a challenging funding environment, with Upside pausing capacity expansion and cutting jobs
• Regulatory approval exists only in the US to date, limiting near-term global scale

Future Outlook

• Continued public exposure (e.g. MrBeast taste test) could help build consumer acceptance ahead of eventual capacity re-expansion
• Refocused investment in the existing EPIC site suggests a more capital-disciplined path to scale than the paused Rubicon facility

Sources

1 source, 42% average source confidence — full citations in the Full Analyst Report.