Memphis Meats

Memphis Meats changed its name to Upside Foods in May 2021. The Berkeley, California company grows meat from animal cells rather than from raised and slaughtered animals, and it sells under the UPSIDE Foods brand. Uma Valeti (chief executive), Nicholas Genovese (chief science officer) and Will Clem founded it in 2015. Its SEC filings record a 2015 year of incorporation, and its first Form D gave a San Leandro address before the company moved to Berkeley.

The company's 2016 Form D reports $3.09 million sold, and VentureBeat put its pre-Series A funding from seed rounds and equity crowdfunding at about $5 million. In August 2017 it announced a $17 million Series A led by DFJ, with Cargill, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Kimbal Musk and Atomico also investing. Tyson Ventures, the venture arm of Tyson Foods, was an early investor as well. Form D filings from January 2020 report an equity raise of $161.25 million, which an April 2020 amendment raised to $186.25 million, plus a separate $21.9 million equity filing. In May 2022, after the rename, Upside Foods filed a Form D for $400 million sold. TechCrunch described that money as the company's $400 million Series C, and Synthesis Capital took part. Wired lists SoftBank, Cargill, Richard Branson and the Abu Dhabi Growth Fund among its investors. AgFunder reports $608 million raised in total since 2015.

In November 2021 the company opened EPIC, its Engineering, Production and Innovation Center in Emeryville, California. On November 16, 2022, the FDA completed its first pre-market consultation for a cultivated meat product, Upside's chicken, and in June 2023 the USDA approved the product's label, which allowed sales in the United States. Commercial progress then slowed. In 2024 the company dropped a planned plant in Glenview, Illinois and made several rounds of layoffs, including 26 roles in one 2024 cut, followed by another restructuring in 2025. AgFunder reported that the company said its whole-cut technology was not yet ready for commercial scale. No valuation has been confirmed by a primary source.

Memphis Meats is an example of deep-tech food investing in which regulatory clearance arrived before the economics worked. Early backers such as DFJ, Atomico and the strategic investors Cargill and Tyson entered at seed and Series A, and much larger growth rounds followed in 2020 and 2022. AgFunder data shows funding for cultivated meat peaked at $989 million across the sector in 2021 and fell to $177 million in 2023. No liquidity event has occurred for the company's investors.