Robots as a Service to Turn the Tides for Our Oceans: The Reefgen Story
Release Date: 11/01/2023
Premature Obituaries? Bruce Friedrich’s Optimism for Cultivated Meat
Business for Good Podcast
Upon reading his obituary, Mark Twain reportedly wrote that “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” Whether Twain actually wrote this or not, the reality remains that today the reports of the death of cultivated meat are indeed quite real. Yet Bruce Friedrich, the president of the , is here to tell you that he believes such reports are not based on science and are indeed greatly exaggerated. Few people have done more to inspire others to pursue alternative protein—including cultivated meat—as a strategy to ameliorate world problems than Bruce. I’ve known Bruce...
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Defying the Odds: Orbillion Bio Raising Capital for Cultivated Meat in 2024
Business for Good Podcast
If you follow the cultivated meat sector, you know that the last couple years have been tough. Some companies have gone under, others have gone into hibernation, and others have shed staff in cash-conserving layoffs. Major publications have published opinion column obituaries for this industry, yet the work goes on. Part of that work is that of , a B2B cultivated meat company which successfully , surely a Herculean feat. Having now brought in $15 million, while the Orbillion technology is complex, the business model is simple: grow high-quality wagyu beef cells and then sell those cells...
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The Past, Present, and Future of Cultivated Meat with UPSIDE Foods’ Uma Valeti
Business for Good Podcast
No cultivated meat company has raised more capital than UPSIDE Foods. In 2022, after having already raised about $200 million in previous rounds, the company raised another with a company valuation north of the coveted $1 billion unicorn status. No company in the space has garnered more media attention, both positive and critical, than UPSIDE Foods. No company has as much volume of cultivation capacity as UPSIDE Foods. No company is as old as UPSIDE Foods, as it was the first startup formed to take this technology out of academia and work to commercialize real meat grown slaughter-free....
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Fishing for Progress in Asia: Avant Meats
Business for Good Podcast
Asia is leading the world when it comes to semiconductors, solar panels, wind turbines, and other technologies critical for the future. In a time when several US states are the sale of cultivated meat, Asia seems to be leaning into the technology, and one of the most mature companies in the space there is . Founded in Hong Kong in 2018 and having raised about to date, Avant Meats is focused on making a dent in Asian seafood demand. In this episode, Avant founder and CEO Carrie Chan discusses why her focus is seafood, what scale she’s at and where she hopes to soon go, and how...
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Fishing for High-Margins in Cultivated Seafood: BlueNalu’s Path to Scale
Business for Good Podcast
BlueNalu is one of the better-funded companies when it comes to cultivated meat. Having raised more than $100 million, including about $35 million toward the end of 2023—a notoriously difficult time to fundraise—their founder and CEO Lou Cooperhouse is optimistic about their path to success. But as you’ll hear in this episode, Lou isn’t working to compete against the commodity meats like chicken, pork, and beef. Rather, he’s pursuing a strategy to compete against products that are exponentially higher-cost, like bluefin tuna, which can often sell for more than $100 a pound. In this...
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Is the Future of Cultivated Meat in Thailand? Aleph Farms is Betting on It
Business for Good Podcast
When you think about cultivated meat, Thailand isn’t exactly the first country that comes to mind. Sure, you may think about the US, Netherlands, Israel, and Singapore. But the Southeast Asian kingdom is where Israeli cultivated meat juggernaut Aleph Farms recently announced its first commercial factory will be. Having just received Israel’s first regulatory approval to sell cultivated meat—and the world’s first regulatory approval for cultivated beef in particular—Aleph Farms CEO Didier Toubia discusses his company’s rollout strategy with me in this conversation. As you’ll...
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Flying Cars or Electric Cars? Isha Datar’s Thoughts on Where Cultivated Meat Tech Stands Today
Business for Good Podcast
When the New York Times recently ran an declaring the infant fatality of the cultivated meat industry, Isha Datar, CEO of , was quoted as saying of the sector, “this is a bubble that is going to pop.” Given that New Harvest is intended to promote and advance the field, what did Isha mean by this? She expounded on that thought in a asserting that while she disagrees with the columnist’s conclusion that cultivated meat can never become a viable reality, she believes that the sector has been plagued by “exaggerations, lies, and broken promises.” In this episode, Isha and I talk...
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Mark Post, A Decade After the First Cultivated Burger
Business for Good Podcast
In 2013, Dr. Mark Post when he debuted the world’s first-ever burger grown from animal cells. Weighing in as a quarter-pounder, the burger carried a price tag of a mere $330,000—all of which was funded by Google co-founder Sergey Brin. A decade later, what does Mark think about the movement and the industry he helped birth? When his burger was debuted, a grand total of zero companies existed to commercialize what would come to be called cultivated meat, no serious investment dollars had flowed into cultivated meat research, yet hopes were high that such meat would be on...
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Are Smaller Cultivators the Answer for Cultivated Meat’s Success? Niya Gupta Thinks So
Business for Good Podcast
Some of the companies in the cultivated meat space are betting that massive stainless steel cultivators—think 100,000L to 250,000L—are the path to commercialization. Niya Gupta, CEO of , is thinking smaller. She argues that there may be a more realistic path using a , void of the impellers that agitate the more conventionally used reactors in the sector. Founded in 2018, the company was spun out of , the first-ever cultivated animal product company which is now focused on materials like leather rather than meat. Having raised more than $20M in its first six years, Fork and Good...
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Josh Tetrick on the Future of the Cultivated Meat Movement
Business for Good Podcast
If you listened to the , you already know that there’s an updated paperback edition of my book that’s coming out April 9, 2024. I announced in that episode that, aligning with that release, this show will be devoted for a couple months exclusively to interviews with leaders in the cultivated meat space, many of whom are profiled in the book. And there’s perhaps no person in the cultivated meat sector who’s generated more headlines than Josh Tetrick, CEO of both and . Along with people like Mark Post and Uma Valeti, both of whom will also be guests in this podcast series,...
info_outlineYou probably already know why coral reefs are so important—after all, they’re home to a quarter of all marine life. But do you know about seagrass?
Seagrass not only provides habitat for aquatic wildlife, but it accounts for 10% of oceanic carbon storage, despite only taking up less than one percent of the seafloor. It also produces oxygen, cleans the ocean, protects against coastal erosion and more.
Sadly, humanity is destroying both coral reefs and seagrass forests, with oceanic warming and acidification taking a major toll, along with pollution and fishing. Because of us, the world’s already lost half of all corals and a third of all seagrass just in the past few decades.
But what if humanity could be as effective at growing reefs and seagrass as we are at destroying them? Proving that is the goal of Reefgen, a startup pioneering not SaaS (software as a service) business model, but rather RaaS (robots as a service) business model.
Reefgen has invented robots that can navigate marine environments with precision and plant baby grass and corals at rates that are orders of magnitude faster than a human could.
And there’s a business in this RaaS model. Not only are companies that want to pay for eco-offsets willing to pay to robotically plant new reefs and grassbeds, but so do companies that economically depend on vibrant ocean ecosystems for their livelihoods.
Reefgen CEO Chris Oakes, a marine biologist turned venture capitalist turned entrepreneur talks about the company’s trajectory, its pilot trials in Hawaii, California, Indonesia, and Wales, and how it’s going to scale in order to turn the tides for our planet.
Discussed in this episode
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Our past episodes with Coral Vita (coral restoration) and Drone Seed (forest restoration).
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BBC on Reefgen’s seagrass work in Wales.
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ReefGen was birthed from Good Machines Studio.
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Reefgen’s pending patent application
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Chefs using seagrass for rice!
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Chris recommends reading Why Startups Fail and Getting Things Done.
More about Chris Oakes
Christopher Oakes is a marine biologist who specializes in deep-tech product commercialization and corporate development. Oakes holds a B.A. and M.A. in Biology from Occidental College. Oakes has dedicated his career to molecular tools and diagnostics, robotics, sustainable aquaculture and venture building. As CEO of Reefgen, he is setting the company’s vision around mechanizing nearshore planting operations and strategic direction to meet the scale of ecosystem restoration market needs in the face of climate change.
During his time at Occidental, Chris worked with the Vantuna Research Group focusing on life history studies of nearshore marine fishes, marine environmental monitoring, time series analysis and spatial modeling. He also developed laboratory procedures and analytical techniques for morphology studies of gastropods. Former companies and roles include: COO Sustainable Ocean Alliance, VP Product and Market Development NovoNutrients, Development Manager Liquid Robotics, Regional Manager Laboratory Corporation of America, and Director of Strategic Alliances and Venture Portfolio at Deep Science Ventures. Chris is also a long-time board member and R&D chair at the non-profit Marine Applied Research and Exploration (MARE).