Cultured meat startup Higher Steaks receives $ 30 million and is renamed Uncommon

British cultured meat startup Higher Steaks has raised $30 million in a Series A funding round and revealed it is changing its name to Uncommon.

Founded in Cambridge in 2017, Uncommon is one of countless companies committed to making cultured “lab-grown” meat a reality in kitchens and restaurants around the world, with everything from synthetic sausages and fake burgers to pseudo-seafood. Uncommon, for its part, is particularly focused on the $250 billion global pork market, developing bacon and pork belly products.

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Unusual Founders: Chief Science Officer Dr. Ruth Faram with CEO Benjamina Bollag Image credits: Unusual

Regulatory hurdles have meant that meat made from test-tube animal cells has been slow to gain a foothold, with Singapore currently the only market in the world where cultured meat is available for sale. The Food and Drug Association (FDA) in the US has also recently started making such edibles safe for human consumption.

However, some countries are resisting the burgeoning fake meat revolution, including Italy, which is considering a complete ban on lab-grown foods to protect its culinary heritage.

But another long-standing challenge of bringing cultured meat to market is scalability. Being able to produce large enough quantities of cultured meat at a low enough price is problematic, with some companies pursuing a hybrid approach of cultured meat and plant-based protein to get their products to market faster.

However, Uncommon says it uses a technique that involves using a polymer molecule called RNA (ribonucleic acid), or more specifically mRNA, which essentially contains “instructions” that allow cells to make proteins based on their own internal functions.

“This also means that Uncommon can make real meat without genetic engineering,” Uncommon co-founder and CEO Benjamina Bollag told TechCrunch. “With countries increasingly opposed to genetically engineered foods, Uncommon hopes this means it can scale its cultured meat around the world with regulatory challenges.”

In addition, Bollag says it uses this patent-pending technique to bring cultured meat closer to the price parity of traditional meat.

“With this method, it is also possible to target muscle and fat regulators in the cells more directly compared to growth factors and small molecules, in a similar way to editing genes,” Bollag said. “This in turn reduces the amount of raw materials needed, allowing the process to be scaled up at a lower cost compared to using genetic engineering.”

Uncommon’s $30 million Series A round was led by London-based Balderton Capital and New York-based Lowercarbon Capital, with participation from a number of institutional and UK investors, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and his brother Max. The company said it plans to use its new cash injection to scale up production and jump-start the regulatory approval process in Europe and Singapore, while keeping a “close eye” on the US market.

“Singapore is likely to be the first to receive approval as it is the most developed cultured meat ecosystem, and other markets will follow,” Bollag said, though he had few indications of when commercialization could occur. “We’re starting with high-end restaurants first before moving to supermarkets.”