Are Smaller Cultivators the Answer for Cultivated Meat's Success? Niya Gupta Thinks So

Some of the companies in the cultivated meat space are betting that massive stainless steel cultivators—think 100,000L to 250,000L—are the path to commercialization. Niya Gupta, CEO of Fork and Good, is thinking smaller.

She argues that there may be a more realistic path using a larger number of smaller tanks, void of the impellers that agitate the more conventionally used reactors in the sector.

Founded in 2018, the company was spun out of Modern Meadow, the first-ever cultivated animal product company which is now focused on materials like leather rather than meat. Having raised more than $20M in its first six years, Fork and Good just held its first-ever tasting of the animal cells they're growing, and as you'll hear in this conversation, it was a real success.

Does Niya think that the cultivated meat industry can make up one percent of the conventional meat industry's volume within the next decade? Listen to her insights in this episode for the answer to that question!

Discussed in this episode

• Niya recommends reading Man's Search for Meaning, which she re-reads annually.

• Paul mentions that a quote from Man's Search for Meaning was read by the officiant at his wedding. That quote follows: "The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love."

• Niya also recommends reading Radical Candor and Mindset.

• Modern Meadow is profiled in Clean Meat, including the new (2024) paperback edition.

More about Niyati Gupta

Niya Gupta is the co-founder and CEO of Fork & Good, a cultivated meat company addressing the high costs of the industry with a novel and patented approach in cell culture that produces meat more efficiently than cows and pigs. Niya was also the CEO of Comcrop, a vertical farming startup in Singapore selling greens into major supermarkets. Prior to this she had spent more than 10 years in food and conventional agriculture businesses, including at McKinsey and Syngenta. She holds an MBA and MPAID from Harvard, and an Economics BA from Yale.