Ever After Foods Nets $2M & Snaps Up Cultivated Seafood Startup Fishway

Israeli food tech firm Ever After Foods has secured $2M in funding and acquired Belgium’s Fishway, combining their cultivated protein technologies with an initial focus on pet food.

Ever After Foods is advancing its cultivated meat efforts with the acquisition of new capital and a cell-cultured seafood startup.

The company has raised $2M in funding to support its commercialisation efforts and further expand its platform, which will be boosted by the purchase of Belgium’s Fishway.

Ahead of the transaction, the two firms had found that Fishway’s aquatic cell lines and animal-component-free growth media could be incorporated into Ever After Foods’s production system.

One of the first commercial focuses for the integrated platform would be on cultivated protein ingredients for premium pet food, with Ever After Foods citing the “compelling combination of industry demand, product value and favourable regulatory dynamics” for this red-hot market.

The deal will see Fishway’s existing team become part of its new owner, while its existing shareholders will continue to support Ever After Foods’s platform and “confidence in its long-term potential”.

“Fishway has built deep expertise in aquatic cell biology and animal-component-free media. At Ever After Foods, we’ve focused on industrial-scale production, process development, edible scaffold technology and scale-up,” Ever After Foods CEO Eyal Rosenthal said in a LinkedIn post. “Bringing these capabilities together is a natural next step.”

Deal will shorten development timelines and accelerate commercialisation

Formed as a joint venture between cellular agriculture firm Pluri and the Tnuva Group (Israel’s largest food company),  Ever After Foods has exclusive licensing rights to use the former’s technology and intellectual property to commercialise cultivated meat.

The startup operates a species-agnostic platform that integrates advanced bioprocess engineering, a proprietary edible scaffold technology called PlantriX, and its Edible Packed-Bed production system, which comprises a patented 3D cell expansion environment to mimic the cells’ natural environment.

This technology stack enables the firm to dramatically lower production costs for cultivated meat (by as much as 90%). Its bioreactors yield up to six times more protein and 700 times more lipids from each cell, offering better flavour and nutritional value. In fact, it’s working with Bühler to commercialise a system that can produce proteins using equipment at least 10 times smaller than the industry standard.

The process is also much more climate-friendly than industrially raising livestock, resulting in 93% less air pollution, 95% less land use, and 94% less water consumption.

Fishway, meanwhile, has paired specialised aquatic biology with animal-component-free media. While inputs like animal serum have been used in cell culture for decades, they’re in short supply and highly expensive, and have sparked ethical concerns about the use of fetal animals to produce cultivated meat.

Combining Fishway’s tech with Ever After Foods’s manufacturing platform creates a faster, more integrated pathway from initial innovation and media development to industrial-scale production. It will enable the latter to shorten development cycles, reduce technical interfaces, and accelerate commercialisation across multiple species and applications.

“The cultivated protein space has faced an assortment of challenges over the last few years, but the promise of quality protein production at scale has not dimmed. The industry is entering a new phase, moving from isolated technology development to industrial integration and commercialisation,” said Fishway CEO Annelies Bogaerts.

“After an initial technology collaboration demonstrating the power of our complementary solutions, it was clear that the acquisition would help us drive a new era of safe, sustainable protein manufacturing. We look forward to supporting EAF’s industrial platform.”

Ever After Foods to continue expansion via ‘selective technology integrations’

The Fishway takeover extends Ever After Foods’s capabilities of supporting food, ingredient, and pet food companies, enabling them to accelerate the development and industrial-scale production of cultivated meat, seafood, and other “next-generation protein applications”.

With Belgium remaining an important centre of excellence for Fishway’s aquatic biology and media development, the deal will strengthen Ever After Foods’s scientific and operational footprint in Europe.

The initial focus on pet food comes amid a boom in cultivated meat tailored for cats and dogs. Last year, Meatly launched a hybrid chicken product for dogs in the UK (it has since raised £10M to build a factory and re-enter the market in 2027). Friends & Family Pet Food has been selling cultivated quail treats and broth toppers for pets in Singapore since April, and BeneMeat and Forza10 will soon launch Coolty Meat, a hybrid hamster meat for dogs, in Europe.

“The future of protein will be determined not by who develops the next breakthrough, but by who can bring breakthrough technologies together into scalable industrial production,” said Rosenthal. “Fishway is an important addition to our broader strategy to build the industrial infrastructure required for resilient, scalable, and secure protein production.”

He added: “We are committed to selectively integrating complementary biology, media and manufacturing technologies while remaining an open manufacturing platform serving companies across the cultivated protein ecosystem.”

The development builds on the alternative protein sector’s consolidation wave – since September 2024, at least 85 players involved in this space have been acquired, merged, fallen into insolvency, or shut down altogether.

Cultivated meat has had a particularly tough go of things, as companies struggle to fundraise. Several firms have ceased operations in this period, such as Believer Meats, Meatable, Cultimate Foods, Upstream Foods, CellRev, and Cell4Food. Others have pivoted or diversified into personal care and life sciences, including leading startups Upside Foods, Vow, and Wildtype.

Ever After Foods, which has now attracted at least $12M in investment, aims to buck this trend by continuing to expand its industrial manufacturing platform through “internal innovation, strategic partnerships and selective technology integrations” that can speed up commercialisation across multiple species and applications.