Omeat Becomes Evergreen, Raises $6M to Bring Cultivated Meat to US & Singapore

US cultivated meat startup Omeat has rebranded to Evergreen Connect and secured $6M in new funding to launch blended beef products stateside and in Singapore.

Nearly three years after emerging from stealth and enduring a rollercoaster of a period, Los Angeles-based Omeat has transformed its identity and received fresh capital to advance its mission to bring cultivated meat to market.

The startup is now called Evergreen Connect, and has raised $6M in an open funding round involving S2G Investments, BOLD Capital Partners, Good Startup, and other investors.

This takes its total raised to $46M, and will accelerate its goal of putting cultivated meat on consumers’ plates. Evergreen is already working with meat distributors in the US and Singapore to commercialise blended beef mince, and is “well advanced” in its regulatory process in both regions.

“Evergreen will supply fresh, 100% beef to meat producers and partner with them to reach consumers,” said Evergreen CEO James Miller.

“We’re focused on strengthening how it’s supplied. By delivering predictable quality and pricing of real beef at scale, we help our partners build more resilient supply chains and keep beef affordable for consumers,” he added.

Evergreen moves past internal rifts to tackle beef’s volatility

Evergreen was founded in 2021 by tissue engineer Ali Khademhosseini, and came out of stealth two years later with an alternative to fetal bovine serum (FBS).

This was created using regenerative plasma drawn humanely from cows that graze freely on its carbon-negative farm. Collected weekly, the process to extract the plasma is similar to human plasma donation – unlike blood, plasma regenerates quickly, so the cows don’t feel depleted.

It soon launched Plenty, a cell culture media supplement described as affordable and scalable. But the company was plunged into crisis a year later, after cutting its workforce by 80% and a change in leadership enforced by what insiders called a hostile work culture.

Khademhosseini stepped down from his role and was replaced by Miller, and the company was operating with a skeleton staff of 10. Some former employees said the firm had had trouble expanding its production process, and was still validating its process at a 200-litre scale, despite obtaining 2,000- and 10,000-litre bioreactors.

Now, the company seems to have turned a corner, suggesting that the new funding reflects its “sharpened focus on bringing stability to a beef industry defined by volatility”.

Indeed, in the US, beef prices have been breaking their all-time record every month since March 2025, reaching $6.68 per lb in December. Beef cattle herd inventories have fallen to levels not seen in 70 years, leading to a meat shortage compounded by the increase in protein demand as a result of the GLP-1 boom.

One survey found that the price hikes have led nearly half of Americans (48%) to reduce the amount of beef they buy, with another 12% giving it up altogether. And if beef continues to get more expensive, as is predicted, 72% would consider buying less of it, and 48% would remove it from their grocery lists.

“I’m proud of the team for staying focused and disciplined, and grateful to the partners and investors who believe the future of food will be built through consistency and trust, not hype,” Miller said in a LinkedIn post.

Stability is the name of the game with Evergreen’s blended meat approach

According to Evergreen, its refreshed identity formalises a strategy that shifts cultivated meat from a consumer curiosity to a dependable infrastructure solution that will bolster the beef supply chain, which has been marred by price swings, supply shocks, and forecasting uncertainty.

“The problem with current animal protein supply isn’t a lack of innovation, it’s a lack of predictability,” said Miller. “At Evergreen, stability is our product. We’ve built the company around radical consistency. Consistent quality, consistent costs, consistent taste and texture, and consistent execution, because that’s what turns scepticism into trust and opportunity.”

The company is taking the blended meat approach – combining cultivated meat with conventional animal protein to offer the best of both worlds. This has been the philosophy behind most cultured meat products that have made it to the market, from Wildtype’s salmon and Mission Barns’s pork to Good Meat’s chicken.

Working with meat distributors will simplify logistics and open up access to a wider set of meat-eaters, while allowing Evergreen to keep the cost of cultivated meat lower than if it were a non-blended format. It will also avoid alienating the livestock industry, instead enabling them to diversify their product offering and income sources.

The startup says its cultivated beef platform can seamlessly integrate into existing end-to-end workflows via blended products, which can help customers manage volatility, stabilise pricing, and forecast more confidently.

This is likely what caught the attention of investors in what was otherwise a dismal funding year for cultivated meat. In the first nine months of 2025, this category had only attracted $36M in funding – that’s half a million less than what Evergreen alone raised in its Series A round in 2022.

“In a year when capital has been highly selective, Evergreen stood out for its operational discipline, regulatory focus, and clear path into the market,” said Kevin Lo, partner at S2G Investments. “By prioritising partnership, the company has positioned cultivated beef as a practical way to strengthen the existing beef supply chain.”

A portion of the new funds will be allocated to conduct the due diligence required for regulatory approval, which the startup says it expects to receive “in the near future”. Its efforts will be helped by the presence of Eric Schulze, a former regulator at the FDA who took over as CSO and CTO last year.

“We make beef for beef lovers and beef processors, and we don’t compromise through plant-based proteins,” he said. “At Evergreen, we work with ranchers and meat producers to make delicious meat products, at the quality, quantity, and cost that customers expect.”