What Meatable’s Bankruptcy Really Tells Us About Building in Long-Horizon Markets

1. Why Meatable’s story matters

When Dutch cultivated meat company Meatable confirmed it would wind down operations and enter liquidation, the initial headlines focused on one thing: failed funding efforts.

Yet this was not a fringe startup that quietly disappeared. Meatable had raised around $100M, built a strong technical platform, secured government support for innovation, and sat at the heart of the Dutch life sciences cluster. It was regularly cited as one of Europe’s most promising food-tech scale-ups.

So what went wrong?

At Growth Lantern, we analysed Meatable’s journey through the lens of three critical elements in any growth story:

1. The timing and nature of key inflexion points in the business

2. The maturity of its product, customers and operations at each of those points

3. The way its capital, partnerships and leadership aligned – or didn’t – with that reality

This article synthesises those insights and outlines what could have been done differently at strategic, tactical and operational levels.

2. The context: a slow market in a fast-money world

First, the macro picture matters.

Cultivated meat is not a typical tech market. It is shaped by:

• Long regulatory pathways

• High capital intensity for labs and production

• Complex manufacturing and quality demands

• Uncertain consumer acceptance and price sensitivity

Industry data show that funding for cultivated meat startups fell from $139M in 2024 to just $36M in the first nine months of 2025. At the same time, several other high-profile players shut down, including Believer Meats (despite full US approval and a large factory) and others in Europe and the UK.

In simple terms, most ventures in this field are being asked to deliver revenue, margins and growth at a pace that the underlying market cannot support.

3. Where Meatable stood on its growth journey

Looking at public information, Meatable had clearly moved beyond the early “idea and prototype” phase:

• It had developed credible, cultivated pork products and conducted tasting events.

• It had invested heavily in technology, building a notable patent portfolio in cell culture and production.

  It had secured government innovation credit and strategic investors.

• It had announced a joint venture in Singapore, where regulation is ahead of Europe, and acquired another cultivated meat platform to broaden its capabilities.

In other words, the science and demonstration products were in relatively good shape. The company was trying to move from technical success to commercial momentum.

But when we examine the business through the lens of maturity – not of the science, but of the entire system – a different picture emerges.

4. The four significant gaps that emerged

4.1. The market was not ready on the timeline the money demanded

Strategically, Meatable bet on entering Singapore first, with a view to opening up other markets later. That makes sense given Singapore’s regulatory stance. But approvals took longer than expected, and Europe and other regions remained closed or uncertain.

This created a structural mismatch:

• The company’s cost base and commitments were based on a certain pace of approvals and a rapid path to market.

• The reality was slower, with limited near-term options to generate meaningful revenue.

On a tactical level, this should have translated into more conservative assumptions: longer timelines, smaller initial facilities, a more explicit focus on a handful of early customers in one city rather than ambitious global narratives.

Operationally, it called for very tight control of burn and a constant re-check of “Do our current commitments still match what the market can realistically deliver in the next 24–36 months?”

4.2. The commercial engine lagged behind the technology

Meatable’s technical platform was impressive. But there is a difference between having great demos and having a repeatable business.

Across public disclosures, there is little evidence that Meatable had:

• A base of recurring, paying customers

• A proven price point and margin structure in a live market

• A simple, robust way of getting product from bioreactor to plate, contract after contract

This is not unusual in such a young sector. But it becomes a problem when a company starts making moves that only make sense once that commercial engine is already working: extensive production facilities, platform acquisitions, broad product portfolios.

Strategically, the focus should have been on a much narrower objective: “Prove that we can profitably sell a single core product at small scale to a defined set of customers in one market.”

Tactically, that would have meant:

• Prioritising a handful of “lighthouse” customers in Singapore

• Launching with just one or two formats (e.g., ground pork for specific menu items)

• Running structured experiments on price, volume and contract terms

Operationally, it would mean measuring success not by press coverage or announced partnerships, but by repeat orders, gross margin per kilogram, and customer retention.

4.3. Complexity outpaced consolidation

By 2025, Meatable was juggling:

• Regulatory efforts across multiple jurisdictions

• A Singapore joint venture

• The acquisition and integration of another cultivated meat platform

• Exploration of adjacent applications, like cultivated leather

Each of these moves is understandable in isolation. Together, they create a complex organisational and financial burden – especially in a company that has not yet proven its core commercial loop.

Strategically, this is a question of sequencing: expanding horizontally and geographically before the basic model is reliable is like building extensions on a house before the foundations are dry.

Tactically, greater selectivity was needed:

• Clear “must-haves” vs. “nice-to-haves”

• Hard-stop criteria for initiatives that do not move the needle on revenue and unit economics within a set period

• Alignment between leadership, board and investors on what the next 12–24 months were truly about

Operationally, that translates into regular portfolio reviews: what is adding real, measurable strength to the business now, and what is simply adding noise and burn?

4.4. The capital stack wasn’t built for a long-haul journey

Ultimately, Meatable’s board and investors concluded they could not justify further funding. Given the sector-wide funding collapse and the lack of near-term revenue, this is understandable. But it also reflects a deeper issue: the type of capital the company depended on was not designed for multi-year, pre-revenue, regulation-heavy ventures.

Strategically, a different capital strategy was needed from the outset:

• A deliberate mix of public funding, strategic corporate investors, long-horizon funds and perhaps non-dilutive revenue opportunities

• A shared understanding among all investors that this was a 10+ year journey, not a 5-year sprint to exit

Tactically, this would have meant smaller, more frequent rounds anchored in specific proof-points, and a constant search for ways to generate early income from parts of the technology (e.g., licensing, tools, services) while the core meat product matured.

Operationally, it required ruthless attention to cash: weekly runway tracking, early preparation for bridges, and immediate adaptation of spending plans when sector funding began to dry up.

5. What Meatable could have done differently – in practice

Putting this all together, what might a more resilient path have looked like?

Strategically:

• Treat cultivated meat as a “slow market” from day one – build a story, plan and capital stack around that reality.

• Focus on one country, one product, one customer segment to prove a working commercial engine before pursuing multiple geographies and adjacencies.

• Align investors, the board, and the team around realistic timelines and the milestones that truly matter: paying customers, margins, and repeat orders.

Tactically:

• Build a smaller, “minimum viable” production footprint first, and only scale once economics and demand are visible.

• Use Singapore as a live laboratory to refine pricing, operations and customer relationships with a handful of partners.

• Keep expansion moves (acquisitions, new formats, new markets) on hold until the core business loop is demonstrably healthy.

Operationally:

• Track real-world indicators of progress: number of repeat customers, gross margin per kg, production reliability, and runway.

• Regularly review all major initiatives and stop or pause those that don’t support the immediate goal of building a stable commercial core.

• Maintain a culture that’s ready for a marathon, not a sprint: transparent about risks, honest about delays, and focused on learning as much as on breakthrough announcements.

6. What this means for founders, investors and ecosystem builders

Meatable’s bankruptcy is not proof that cultivated meat cannot work. It is evidence that the way we currently fund and govern long-horizon technologies is still immature.

For founders, the message is clear: ambition must be paired with ruthless focus on the following critical proof point in the journey – customers, economics, and operational reliability – not just on technical milestones.

For investors, it’s a reminder that new industries with long lead times require new models of capital, expectations and governance.

For ecosystem builders – from governments and development agencies to research organisations – it highlights the need to align regulation, public support and private capital so that companies are not pushed into “act like a scale-up” mode before the fundamentals are in place.

At Growth Lantern, we work with founders and scale-ups in precisely these situations: high uncertainty, long timelines, and complex ecosystems. If you’re navigating similar challenges, we’d be happy to explore how a more structured approach to growth inflexion points can help you avoid the traps Meatable fell into.