Shanghai-based The new funding for CellX is provided by a group of tactical investors. The funding helps CellX move closer to producing its cultivated meat products at a pilot scale.
CellX startup, the leader in China’s cultivated meat market, has successfully raised $6.5M in a Series A+ funding round.
Shanghai-based The new funding for CellX is provided by a group of tactical investors. The funding helps CellX move closer to producing its cultivated meat products at a pilot scale. The company has received over $20 million in funding to date, making it China’s most well-funded startup in cellular agriculture.
The 2020 launch of CellX startup, leader in China’s cultivated meat market is dedicated to building platform technologies using a multi-species approach. The business is actively working with top universities and businesses around the world to hasten the commercialization of cultivated meat, especially in the APAC region.
Ziliang Yang, co-founder and CEO of CellX, stated in a statement that “meat is a commodity that needs to be produced consistently at a competitive cost and on a large scale.” China alone consumes more than 100 million tonnes of meat annually, or more than 25% of the world’s total. Production at low cost and at scale is essential if cultivated meat is to have a significant impact on our global food supply chain.
CellX was founded in 2020 and has built R&D platforms in four key areas of lab-grown meat technology: cell line development, media optimisation, creative bioprocess design, and end product development. CellX announced earlier this year that it intended to build China’s top pilot production facility for lab-grown meat, complete with several thousand-liter bioreactors.
According to Dr Chen, the R&D Director at CellX, “We have successfully developed 10+ cell lines from various species, adapted 5+ of them into suspension culturing, and the leading cell line has now entered pilot stage.” Additionally, we created numerous serum-free media and significantly increased yield, which allowed us to significantly lower production costs. Our current goal is to scale up to 2,000L.”
A joint venture between CellX and Tofflon, a publicly traded biotech and food equipment company, will produce CellX’s upcoming pilot facility.
The facility will house numerous 1,000-liter bioreactors and serve as a hands-on area where customers can try CellX’s sample products. Through this initiative, China will open its first “transparent food space” for research and development, pilot production, and public tasting of cultivated meat.
CellX and China can contribute to low-cost and scale production of cultivated meat in China. China’s biopharma industry and fermentation sector offer a competitive ecosystem, media, equipment, and a skilled bioprocess engineer pool.
This enables companies to produce cultivated meat at significantly lower costs. Pilot production facilities at a thousand-liter scale are crucial for China’s future, as they contribute to carbon reduction and food security.
Cultivated meat and “future foods” were incorporated by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs into China’s 14th Five-Year Plan at the beginning of 2022.
During his speech at the annual meeting of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, President Xi also emphasised the need for China to adopt “a ‘Greater Food’ approach” to nutrition, emphasising the significance of ensuring a steady supply of all staple food groups.
Yang believes that cellular agriculture has a bright future for globalisation. In the end, carbon and sustainability are global problems that humanity must address jointly. It’s one of the few topics in which everyone can agree.