In the sixth and final episode of Green Queen in Conversation - Cultivated Meat Pioneers, Sonalie Figueiras talks to Dr. Uma Valetti, founder & CEO of Upside Foods, based in California. During the recordings for this show, the US government granted the first regulatory approval for cultivated meat to be sold in the country to just 2 companies, one of which was Upside. In this very personal interview, Dr. Valeti talks about starting the first cultivated meat company in the world, his 7-year journey to achieving the regulatory milestone, how he celebrated, and how it felt to watch the first restaurant customer take a bite of the no-slaughter chicken created by him and his team.

Dr. Uma Valeti is the CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods, the world’s leading cultivated meat company. UPSIDE Foods was the first company focused on growing meat directly from animal cells and has led the industry ever since. Since 2015, UPSIDE Foods has achieved numerous industry-defining milestones, including being the first company to produce multiple species of cultivated meat (beef, chicken and duck), to partner with the existing meat industry, and to sell a cultivated meat product in the United States. UPSIDE Foods has raised over $600 million from a diverse coalition of investors including Richard Branson, John Mackey, Bill Gates, Temasek, ADG, Softbank, Threshold, Baillie Gifford, Norwest, Cargill, Tyson Foods and Whole Foods. Uma’s vision is to enable people around the world to eat the meat they love, while transforming the food system to become more sustainable and humane. Uma has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Aspen Ideas Festival and SXSW. In 2019 he was named a “Global Thinker of the Decade” by Foreign Policy magazine. Uma is a Mayo Clinic-trained cardiologist and an adjunct professor in Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University.

Based in Berkeley, CA, UPSIDE Foods grows meat, poultry and seafood directly from real animal cells. These products are not vegan or vegetarian—they are delicious meat, made without the need to raise and slaughter billions of animals. Founded as the world's first cultivated meat company in 2015, UPSIDE Foods has achieved numerous industry-defining milestones, including being granted approval to sell cultivated meat in the United States in June 2023 and completing the first consumer sale of cultivated meat in the U.S. The company believes that people shouldn't have to choose between the foods they love and a thriving planet, and is working to build a better food system with access to delicious, humane, and sustainable meat, poultry, and seafood. UPSIDE Foods has won various industry awards, including the New York Times' Good Tech Awards, FastCo's Next Big Thing in Tech, and the Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in the Nation by the National Association for Business Resources. UPSIDE Foods has raised a total of $608 million, including from the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund (ADG), Baillie Gifford, Bill Gates, Cargill, Future Ventures, John Doerr, John Mackey, Kimbal and Christiana Musk, Norwest, Richard Branson, Softbank, Temasek, Threshold, Tyson Foods, and others.

For more information, please visit upsidefoods.com.

In the fifth episode of Green Queen in Conversation: Cultivated Meat Pioneers, Sonalie Figueiras talks to arguably the original pioneer of cultivated meat himself, Dr. Mark Post, Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of Mosa Meat, based in the Netherlands. This interview was recorded on the 10th year anniversary of when Dr. Post and his team presented the first-ever cultivated meat beef burger to the world, an event that set the course for the industry and truly changed the future of food and what was deemed possible in terms of how we produce meat. Dr Post remains one of the key voices for the future of the industry and in this conversation, he shares a decade’s worth of insights, learnings and inspiration.

Mark Post is an MD, PhD and professor of Sustainable Industrial Tissue Engineering at Maastricht University. His main research includes the engineering of tissues for medical applications and consumer products, which has led to the development of cultured beef from bovine skeletal muscle stem cells. In August 2013, he presented the world’s first hamburger from cultured beef. He is CSO and co-founder of two companies, MosaMeat and Qorium that will commercialize cultured meat and cultured leather.

Mosa Meat is a global food technology company pioneering a cleaner, kinder way of making real beef. Our founders introduced the world’s first cultivated beef hamburger in 2013, by growing it directly from cow cells. Founded in 2016, Mosa Meat is now scaling up production of the same beef that people love, but in a way that is better for people, animals, and the planet. A diverse and growing team of 165 food-loving problem-solvers, we are united in our mission to fundamentally reshape the global food system. Headquartered in Maastricht, The Netherlands, Mosa Meat is a privately held company backed by Blue Horizon, Bell Food Group, Nutreco, Mitsubishi Corporation, Leonardo DiCaprio and others.

For more information, please visit mosameat.com.

In the fourth episode of Green Queen in Conversation: Cultivated Meat Pioneers, Sonalie Figueiras talks to George Peppou, the CEO of Australian startup Vow. Peppou is one of the most compelling leaders in the cultivated meat space today because his vision for the future of food is so unique. He talks about why Vow is choosing to cultivate exotic animals, how his team approaches branding and marketing (including that mammoth meatball unveil), why he's dedicated his life to this industry and whether cultivated meat will be a mass product in the coming decades.

George Peppou is the CEO and Co-Founder of Vow, Australia’s first cell-based meat company. Vow is making sustainability irresistible with cultured meat, inventing new products by growing the cells of animals rather than the animals themselves. For diners, this means tastier and more nutritious meat. For the future of our environment, this means a smaller land footprint and a fraction of the greenhouse gases produced by factory farming. It's the best possible way to make better food available to billions of people.

Vow exists to make better meat for meat lovers. Consumers are experts in the meat they love - beef, chicken and pork. To change consumer behaviour we create entirely new meats that are tastier, more nutritious or more exclusive than meat from animals. We do this using cultured meat technology, growing the best parts of meat from the cells of animals. Vow was founded in April 2019 and is now a team of over 60 people in Sydney, Australia. Vow is backed by leading investors from Australia and around the world including Blackbird, Square Peg, Grok and Tenacious Ventures.

For more information, please visit vowfood.com.