Mosa Meat has raced past a €1.5m crowdfunding target as it hunts for extra funding to help it prepare for the first product launch of its lab-grown beef.
The Dutch company has already raised over €3m from the crowd with another two weeks left to run on the campaign.
It comes after it raised €40m in an oversubscribed round last year, led by Lowercarbon Capital and M Ventures.
The latest funding will help the lab-grown meat pioneer speed up the final R&D stage before restaurant sales can start, and fund marketing for the first product launch.
Mosa Meat does not yet have regulatory approval to sell its products in any country, although applications have been submitted in the EU and Singapore. The company also plans to apply in the UK.
Politics threatens to derail the process, with Italy and Hungary already trying to ban the novel food, claiming protection of farmers.
Despite this, Mosa Meats has now raised more than €120m with investment coming from a number of high-profile backers including Leonardo DiCaprio and Google co-founder Sergey Brin.
It recently ran its first formal tastings of cultivated beef in the Netherlands, after its government approved the consumption of lab-grown meat and seafood in controlled environments. The tasters included Dutch cattle farmers.
The company has also opened a 30,000 sq ft “scale-up” factory in Maastricht to give it the capacity to make tens of thousands of cultivated hamburgers a year.
Mosa Meat’s chief scientific officer Mark Post introduced the world’s first lab-grown ‘beef’ burger in 2013. It cost €250k and was paid for by Sergey Brin.
Post later founded the company in 2016 alongside Peter Verstrate, appointing Maarten Bosch as CEO. It is committed to producing beef with 100% renewable energy.
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