The last 12 months have been challenging for cultivated meat and seafood companies trying to raise capital. AGFunderNews.com says Finless Foods is making cutbacks to conserve cash, New Age Eats is running out of funds, and GOOD Meat is being sued by its bioreactor supplier over allegedly unpaid bills.

As AgFunder runs the numbers, preliminary data shows that funding for cultivated meat startups peaked at $989 million in 2021, dipped slightly to $807 million in 2022, and then dropped sharply last year, falling 78 percent to $177 million against a backdrop of a 50 percent drop in agrifood tech investing overall in 2023.

While the funding rounds were far smaller in 2023 versus 2022, investors placed a sizable bet on Uncommon, a UK-based startup formerly called Higher Steaks. That investment netted $30 million in funding to scale the production of cultivated pork using patent-pending technology by speeding up the cell differentiation process.