Mr. Altman invested through Apollo Projects, a fund looking to invest in “lunar” opportunities that have huge growth potential. Credit: JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
Creator of ChatGPT backs British lab-grown pork company.
Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT maker Open AI, has invested in Uncommon, a Cambridge-based company. a company that grows bacon and pork belly from animal cells.
Unusual claims of using a patented technology to create bacon and pork belly from a single animal cell, eliminating the need for antibiotics, animal products and reducing the amount of materials needed to produce meat.
Mr. Altman, 38, is best known for ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot. However, he has invested in many companies, primarily in the tech and energy sectors, including Reddit, Patreon, Helion Energy, and Elon Musk's brain chip company Neuralink.
He was previously President of Y Combinator, Silicon Valley. an investment company that has backed startups such as Airbnb, DropBox, and Scribd.
Uncommon pork belly products can be grown from a single cage animal.
Mr. Altman first invested in Uncommon at an early stage and is now involved in a second round of funding as the business plans to increase production of lab-grown meat.
The company said Friday it has raised a total of 30 $23.9m (£23.9m) from investors including Mr Altman and his brother Max, who together run the Apollo Projects investment fund, which describes itself as offering “lunar shot finance”.
The Apollo Projects website says: “Our favorite companies are those that inspire us to see the world in new ways and tell us what the future might look like.”
Benjamina Bollag, CEO Company Uncommon, formerly Higher Steaks, stated, “Fortunately, they really believed in us when no one else believed or was funded, and then they pushed our idea.”
She said the company chose to grow bacon and pork belly products rather than the beef steaks that many other lab-grown meat companies produced because she believed there was a gap in the market.
“ It's not as hard as wagyu steak, but it's not as easy as nuggets or sausage, where perhaps plant-based [foods] are already doing quite well.”
Benjamina Bollag says her company Uncommon has noticed a niche in the market for lab-grown pork
Because the process does not use gene editing, she expects it will be easier to get regulatory approval .
Ms Bollag added that she hopes cultured meat products can reach mass retail within three to five years.
She said: “I definitely, obviously, I believe that they will become mainstream and mass market. This is not to say that it will be the only meat people consume… [but] I believe it will account for the largest share of the protein market.”
Other sponsors were investment firms Balderton Capital and Lowercarbon. Capital.
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