Clever Carnivore, a Chicago, IL-based cultivated meat company, raised $7M in Seed funding.
The round was led by Lever VC. Other backers included McWin Capital Partners; Thia Ventures, Valo Ventures, Newfund Capital; and Stray Dog Capital.
The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and scale up the production of cultivated meat. Clever Carnivore plans to relocate its Lincoln Park operations to a larger nearby facility by year-end. The expansion will allow the company to scale up production into 500L bioreactors and add in test kitchens.
Led by Virginia Rangos, Ph.D., CEO, Clever Carnivore is a cultivated meat company that provides biotechnology to bring low-cost, top-quality cultivated pork, beef and chicken to the consumer market. Using its model, cruelty-free, sustainable and cost-competitive sausages, the company works to develop cultivated meat products using cell biology, recombinant protein technology and advanced bioreactor design, with the objective of creating consumer products that compete on taste, price and convenience with conventional meat, delivering a gastronomic experience that satisfies vegetarians and carnivores alike.
Clever Carnivore is currently producing cultivated pork sausage, with plans to unveil its prototype product, the Clever Bratwurst, in early 2024.
Clever Carnivore’s R&D is headed by co-founder Paul Burridge, Ph.D., a professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Burridge is an expert with more than 20 years of research experience in cell line development and growth media optimization. The company has optimized its growth media to support its unique cell lines, achieving an incredible reduction in cell culture media costs — one to two orders of magnitude lower than any other cultivated meat company globally.
FinSMEs
04/12/2023