London-based cultivated meat company Meatly has raised £10.4 million in Series A funding to build a 20,000-litre cultivated meat facility in London, which it says will be the largest of its kind in Europe. The company plans to use the investment to move beyond research and development toward pilot-scale production for the UK pet food market. Fit-out of the facility is set to begin immediately, with product releases expected in 2027.
Funding Round Backs Scale-Up Plans
The round brings in three new European investors: Oyster Bay Venture Capital, Clean Growth Fund and JamJar Investments. They join existing backers including Agronomics and Pets at Home, taking Meatly’s total funding to more than £17 million, according to the company’s announcement. Clean Growth Fund also said on LinkedIn that it co-led the round, describing the investment as support for Meatly’s next stage of commercial growth.
From Approval to Commercial Production
Founded in 2022, Meatly has positioned pet food as an early route to market for cultivated meat, where regulatory and consumer adoption dynamics differ from human food. The company received UK regulatory authorisation in 2024 and later sold what it described as the world’s first cultivated pet food in 2025. The launch followed earlier coverage of Chick Bites, a dog treat made with cultivated chicken and developed with The Pack and Pets at Home.
Technology and Cost Reduction
Meatly says it has focused heavily on lowering the cost barriers that have slowed cultivated meat scale-up across the industry. In 2024, the company reported reducing the cost of its chemically defined, protein-free growth medium to £0.22 per litre, followed in 2025 by a roughly tenfold reduction in bioreactor costs. These technical gains are central to its claim that cultivated chicken can become commercially viable for pet food production.
Industry Significance
The investment arrives after several difficult years for alternative protein companies, many of which have faced funding pressure, scale-up challenges and questions over commercial readiness. Meatly’s new facility is intended to demonstrate that cultivated meat can be produced at volumes large enough to support repeat product releases rather than limited demonstrations. Media coverage from Tech.eu, BusinessGreen and Cultivated X framed the raise as a notable milestone for Europe’s cultivated meat sector.
Meatly’s Series A gives the company fresh capital to test whether its cost reductions, regulatory progress and early retail experience can translate into broader production. The planned London facility will be a key test of whether cultivated meat can move from small-batch launches into a more dependable supply chain for pet food brands. If successful, the project could strengthen the UK’s position in cultivated meat while giving the wider sector a closely watched example of industrial-scale execution.