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This is great, and I love Ula's build below.
IMHO the world has to make Alternative Protein work - for animals, for climate, for poverty, for nutrition. It is the win/win/win/win solution we all need.
I am still deeply frustrated by the lack of political support - especially compared to the massive support given to farmers which makes it far from a level playing-field even trying to reach parity.
When I worked on direct air capture of CO2, there was always an analogous discussion of whether the (or a) technology could work, could be industrialised, could be price-competitive (in that case, with the projected price/tonne of carbon trading markets). The technology is so far from maturity, and the scale needed is so massive that it's difficult to predict accurately from experience or first principles.
But there was a very interesting analysis which I saw presented by Katrien Sievert, in which they predicted likely rates of technological evolution and cost-reduction based on the complexity involved. For example, solar panels could be rapidly improved by one "invention" (e.g. a more efficient surface that could absorb light efficiently at two different energies), so it was realistic to see efficiency increasing and price / kWh dropping rapidly. On the other hand, for a mature and complex technology (e.g. a plane engine), it wasn't obvious that one simple invention could suddenly improve efficiency or reduce cost - rather it would require a suite of inventions.
I wonder would an analogous analysis make sense for cultivated protein, to get a realistic idea of possible timelines, but also maybe to identify the most promising route for massive scaling and cost-reduction. Or would you say that the technology is already mature enough to be past this stage?
I would love to see a JFK-like commitment to this - by 2040 at least half the world will feed itself a nutritious diet rich in meat and fish, without having to kill any animals - allied with a genuine commitment to make it happen. I love that people like you keep pushing the narrative (which I also fully believe) that this is fully technically within reach, and lacking only the political will to make it happen - ideally sooner rather than later.
Considering technology characteristics to project future costs of direct air capture - ScienceDirect
Thanks for this post. I don't want to be annoying, so feel free to ignore this if it would take too much of your time to answer, but I'm curious whether anyone has modeled the end-to-end cost of testing this theory of change end-to-end.
For example:
a) Accelerating the remaining R&D needed for scalable solutions
b) Developing a product that's genuinely competitive on taste
c) Securing a mass-market deal in one country, e.g., getting the product into a major supermarket chain at price parity with meat (with funders subsidizing the difference to test the hypothesis), plus the marketing to support it
Put differently: if a funder asked you or someone in the space, "What would it take to test this ToC, and how would you design the test?", what would we tell them?
Part of why I ask is that from the outside, this space can be hard to navigate. Many companies are raising money, and each makes a plausible case for what it could do with more funding. I understand GFI's model is to support the ecosystem broadly rather than back specific companies, but I wonder whether there's a role for identifying the 1–3 most promising bets closest to a real market test, mapping out their pathways and costs, and helping match them with funding. Or perhaps that's already part of what you do?
Not annoying at all - thank you so much for engaging!
Let me start with your points a) and b)
- Accelerating the remaining R&D needed for scalable solutions.
- Developing a product that's genuinely competitive on taste
That sounds easy, but it’s actually incredibly difficult.
Two of GFI’s first six employees were scientists (the other four: policy, communications, development, operations), and their first mandate was to figure out exactly what needed to happen for plant-based and cultivated meat to reach price and taste parity, i.e., what are the things we need to solve, and what’s the TRL for each of those things?
It turned out that there was just way too much that we didn't know. It was surprising to me to realize that there was a lot more in that category on the plant-based side than on the cultivated side. But for both technologies, there were just too many known unknowns (and also unknown unknowns) for us to even speculate.
While we are now (fairly) confident that taste- and price-competitive plant-based and cultivated meat are possible, there are still some really big question marks, especially with regard to the technology that will be required to scale.
For example, on the plant-based meat side, there are some ingredients that are essential to taste (etc. - the full organoleptic experience) parity but that it may be impossible to scale up in a cost-effective manner. e.g., coconut oil and synthetic heme - there are quite literally not enough coconuts on the planet for the scale we'd need. We need alternatives, but we don't know what it's going to cost to make those alternatives, and there aren't nearly enough scientists working on these problems.
Cultivated meat: It seems likely that we are ready now on the private sector side, as I discussed in my first “Meat Matters” substack. That’s great, and I hope those companies will get the investment (or loans) they need to scale. Or that Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google DeepMind will work with them to make it happen.
We may also be there on the open access side, but I doubt it.
Our science team is working on a technical roadmap that will either answer or point toward answers w/r/t both plant-based and cultivated meat (it's called the "technical roadmap," and it'll be out soon). After a bit more than 10 years of working on the issues, we think we have enough information that it's worth sharing what we know and having it pressure-tested and built upon by the broader community of people working on science and engineering around alternative meats.
This is part of why I noted in my piece that if someone from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google DeepMind wants to work to make this happen, they should get in touch. I have some other ideas, too, and generally think that AI could seriously accelerate the answers to your questions.
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Regarding your point c) Securing a mass-market deal in one country, e.g., getting the product into a major supermarket chain at price parity with meat (with funders subsidizing the difference to test the hypothesis), plus the marketing to support it.
Zak Weston from Food System Innovations is working on a project that’s similar (not identical, but same basic concept) to what you describe, and he is talking with funders.
Since he’s working with the companies in question, the information is proprietary.
This is another area where Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google DeepMind could be incredibly valuable - working with the closest alt meat companies to get over the taste and price finish line.
I have some other ideas, too, and generally think that AI could seriously accelerate the answers to your questions.
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This has historically been outside GFI’s remit, mostly b/c we try to focus on things for which there’s not a strong private sector incentive. Thinking in terms of the counterfactual, it’s felt to us like there’s sufficient incentive for the startups in the space to do this on their own, so with limited resources, we have not focused on it.
That said, we’ve been rethinking that POV in the face of evidence that the startups don’t have the bandwidth for this either, and they’re not in the best position to ask for philanthropic (or similar) capital; that’s better done out of an NGO.
So there are some projects at GFI that point in the same direction, and it’s something more and more people across GFI’s offices are looking at.
Thanks for engaging - I appreciate it!