Cultivated meat startup Orbillion Bio has secured venture capital funding to develop further its predictive model or “scale-up algorithm” for cultivated meat and bring a product to the market “within a year’s time.”
Specializing in cultivating heritage breed meats like Wagyu, elk, and lamb, Orbillion is currently focusing on creating a ground beef product that merges cultivated meat with plant-based ingredients to provide a “tasty, nutritious product at the price of conventionally produced meat,” Orbillion CEO Patricia Bubner, told Cultivated X.
The Venture Collective led the funding round, with co-leadership from At One Ventures. YCombinator, Metaplanet, and other prominent global food investors backed the company’s cultivated meat algorithm. This capital brings the startup’s total raised funds to $15 million.
The algorithm for cultivated meat
Instead of solely emphasizing bioreactors and physical equipment, Orbillion Bio is focusing on “bioware” and utilizing advanced computational models to enhance cell lines and growth media, speeding up scale and lowering the costs to reach price parity with meat products.
When asked what “bioware” was, Bubner told Cultivated X, “Bioware, as opposed to the hardware and software that are too often the focus of scale — the stuff that actually makes the meat: cell lines, media, biological data — are included in what we call bioware.”
Last year, the company achieved a significant milestone by successfully conducting a 200 L scale-up run of its cultivated beef product, claimed to be the largest-scale production ever undertaken by a pre-Series A company. According to Orbillion, this milestone underscores the capability of the algorithm to convert 2D culture into 3D culture quickly and cost-effectively.
“The run and the data and scientific proof we gained from it were used to validate our predictive model, process platform and scale up approach — the algorithm for cultivated meat,” she said.
The startup’s predictive modeling platform enables reliable simulation of essential media and bioprocess parameters, reducing commercial scale-up risks and ensuring predictability, yield, speed, and cost-effectiveness. By leveraging this predictive model, the company claims to expedite scale-up processes with more economical development runs.
4 million pounds annually
Besides these impressive milestones, Orbillion states that its Wagyu beef cell lines can thrive in suspension without carriers or genetic engineering methods. Moreover, the company has formulated and enhanced a serum-free growth medium through its predictive model to offer cells precision nutrition, “giving them only what they need when they need it,” surpassing the performance of serum-based media.
Regarding CAPEX limitations, Orbillion’s asset-light approach eliminates the need for capital-intensive, custom-built equipment, enabling scaling on existing infrastructure. The company is establishing manufacturing partnerships, such as collaborating with Solar Biotech, to scale up to 20,000 L bioreactors capable of producing 4 million pounds of meat annually.
“We still hold up our previous commitment to be able to put out 4 million pounds a year once at initial commercial scale,” Bubner told us.
A B2B provider of cultivated meat
Orbillion now boasts a female-majority board and has brought on a new scientific advisor, Ana Piekarz, a PhD scientist and Global Head of ESG Nutrition for Kraft Heinz.
Equipped with fresh funding and top-tier talent, Orbillion is ready to establish strategic alliances as a B2B provider of cultivated meat, reaching beyond its current partnership with Dutch meats distributor Lutein Food for the European market.
Bubner added: “In addition to Luiten Food, we are in discussion with a range of commercial partners to be able to serve different markets globally. I am excited about all of them, and look forward to sharing more in the future.”
