Yahoo Finance ChatGPT creator backs British lab-grown pork company
The creator of ChatGPT has thrown his backing behind a British lab-grown pork company.
Sam Altman, the chief executive of ChatGPT maker Open AI, has invested in Uncommon, a Cambridge-based company that is growing bacon and pork belly from animal cells.
Uncommon claims to use patented technology to create bacon and pork belly from a single animal cell, eliminating the need for antibiotics, animal products, and reducing the materials needed to make the meat.
Mr Altman, 38, is best known for the AI chatbot ChatGPT. However, he has invested in numerous companies, primarily in technology and energy, including Reddit, Patreon, Helion Energy, and Elon Musk’s brain-chip company Neuralink.
He was previously president of Y Combinator, the Silicon Valley investment firm that has backed startups such as Airbnb, DropBox, and Scribd.
Mr Altman first invested in Uncommon at an early stage, and has now taken part in a second funding round as the business plans to scale up the production of its lab-grown meat.
The company said on Friday it had raised a total of $30m (£23.9m) from investors including Mr Altman and his brother Max, who together run the investment fund Apollo Projects, which describes itself as offering “funding for moonshots”.
Apollo Projects’ website reads: “Our favourite companies are those that inspire us to look at the world in a different way, and educate us about what the future could look like.”
Benjamina Bollag, chief executive at Uncommon – which was previously called Higher Steaks – said: “Luckily, they really believed in us when, when no one else did, and funded, led our seed round.”
She said the company had chosen to cultivate bacon and pork belly products rather than beef steaks that many other lab grown meat companies were making because she believed there was a gap in the market.
“It’s not as complex as a Wagyu steak, but it’s not as simple as a nuggets or sausage where maybe plant-based [products] are already delivering pretty well.”
Because no gene editing is used in the process, she said she expected it would be easier to get approval from regulators.
Ms Bollag added she hoped cultivated meat products could make it into mainstream retail within three to five years.
She said: “I definitely, obviously, believe that it will become mainstream and mass market. That doesn’t mean, it will be the only meat that people consume … [but] I believe it will be the largest share of the protein market.”
Other backers included the investment companies Balderton Capital and Lowercarbon Capital.
