This is a helpful analysis of where the movement can absorb capital. One gap I’d love to see addressed: direct philanthropic investment in cultivated meat startups doesn’t appear in any of these categories.
Cultivated meat feels like it’s in a “valley of death.” VC dried up for structural reasons — SaaS-style returns don’t map onto low-margin food products, and biotech more broadly is struggling to compete for capital against the extraordinary returns AI companies are promising. Government funding, which historically bridges this gap for deep tech, faces serious political headwinds. That seems to leave philanthropic capital as the only patient capital available. Given how high-EV cultivated meat seems, its absence here is surprising.
Is this a deliberate strategic choice by the major funds, or a reflection of grantmaking norms that don’t naturally extend to equity investment? Curious whether anyone has written on this or has strong views in either direction.
I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts, too. Two of the funds in this post (The Navigation Fund and the EA Animal Welfare Fund) don’t invest in the alternative protein theory of change. Coefficient Giving does, and some of ACE’s recommended charities are involved in alternative proteins as well.
While I can’t speak for any of the funds, my understanding is that government funding is still making headway around the world, at around $500M in 2024 alone (for context, this is just an estimated 5% of public funding needed for alternative proteins to scale (more here, without an aggregated number for 2026 due to increasingly complicated tracking and categorization, but see the public investment database for more detail). For philanthropic dollars, we generally expect a ~5x ROI in terms of public funding secured per philanthropic dollar spent on advocacy.
With that said, I know other foundations directly support alternative protein R&D with philanthropic dollars, such as Novo Nordisk Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund. Not quite direct philanthropic investment in startups, though.
This is a helpful analysis of where the movement can absorb capital. One gap I’d love to see addressed: direct philanthropic investment in cultivated meat startups doesn’t appear in any of these categories.
Cultivated meat feels like it’s in a “valley of death.” VC dried up for structural reasons — SaaS-style returns don’t map onto low-margin food products, and biotech more broadly is struggling to compete for capital against the extraordinary returns AI companies are promising. Government funding, which historically bridges this gap for deep tech, faces serious political headwinds. That seems to leave philanthropic capital as the only patient capital available. Given how high-EV cultivated meat seems, its absence here is surprising.
Is this a deliberate strategic choice by the major funds, or a reflection of grantmaking norms that don’t naturally extend to equity investment? Curious whether anyone has written on this or has strong views in either direction.
Hi Chad,
I’d be curious to hear others’ thoughts, too. Two of the funds in this post (The Navigation Fund and the EA Animal Welfare Fund) don’t invest in the alternative protein theory of change. Coefficient Giving does, and some of ACE’s recommended charities are involved in alternative proteins as well.
While I can’t speak for any of the funds, my understanding is that government funding is still making headway around the world, at around $500M in 2024 alone (for context, this is just an estimated 5% of public funding needed for alternative proteins to scale (more here, without an aggregated number for 2026 due to increasingly complicated tracking and categorization, but see the public investment database for more detail). For philanthropic dollars, we generally expect a ~5x ROI in terms of public funding secured per philanthropic dollar spent on advocacy.
With that said, I know other foundations directly support alternative protein R&D with philanthropic dollars, such as Novo Nordisk Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund. Not quite direct philanthropic investment in startups, though.