State of the Industry: Fermentation for meat, seafood, eggs, dairy, and ingredients

Executive summary

Fermentation, a process humans have used to make food for millennia, is now at the forefront of efforts to produce meat in more sustainable ways. What was once primarily associated with foods like bread, beer, and yogurt is increasingly being harnessed to create proteins that can help meet rising global demand for meat in more sustainable ways.

Over the past decade, fermentation-enabled protein production has evolved rapidly, shifting from a niche concept focused on enzymes and additives to a global food solution producing bioidentical animal proteins and functional ingredients. In 2025, the sector experienced both progress and growing pains: high-profile closures and funding constraints raised questions about scale up, while regulatory approvals in key markets, new production facilities, and continued public and private investment signaled forward momentum. Increasingly, the field is focusing on fundamentals, including reducing costs, improving taste and texture, and building pathways to price parity.

A decade ago, many of today’s milestones would have seemed out of reach. Since 2015, fermentation has expanded into new applications and geographies, supported by partnerships, infrastructure buildout, and growing inclusion in national food and bioeconomy strategies. While this report details ongoing challenges, including funding declines, technical hurdles, and regulatory complexity, it also highlights less visible progress, from research collaborations to commercial product launches. The underlying case for fermentation-enabled protein remains strong, and with the right support, the sector is well-positioned to play a key role in building a more resilient and sustainable food system.

Report highlights

Industry associations
New facilities
Strategic partnerships
Product trends

Private investment data and insights
Research updates
Public investment and regulation
Industry outlook

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Key bright spots and challenges

In 2025, the fermentation-enabled protein and ingredients sector experienced a mix of successes and struggles across the commercial, investment, technology, policy, and regulatory landscape. Highlights in the report include:

Commercial landscape

New product launches, innovation, and regulatory wins

The sector saw new product launches across meat, dairy, and functional ingredients, plus regulatory milestones in China and the United States. In 2025, more than 163 specialized companies and a growing number of research institutions kept innovating and optimizing fermentation-derived products so consumers can enjoy the foods they love made with a lighter footprint.
Bright spot
- Harnessing knowledge from large companies for the benefit of startups: Partnerships with key dairy, meat, fungi, grain, and yeast makers are enabling synergies and helping grow fermentation ingredient, process, and product pipelines. In this space, startups benefit from corporations’ long-time expertise in industries such as dairy, and together they build on existing knowledge to maximize viability and efficiency.
Challenge
- Product availability varies across different types of fermentation-derived products: Products made from biomass fermentation are more widely available than products made from precision fermentation.

Investments

The funding environment tightened

Fermentation funding was down year-over-year. Companies operating primarily in the fermentation ecosystem raised $357 million in 2025, according to GFI analysis of data from Net Zero Insights (down from $632 million in 2024).
Bright spot
- Europe’s fermentation ecosystem gains momentum: Europe is positioning itself as a strategic hub for fermentation and the broader bioeconomy by leveraging public and industry investment in infrastructure, production assets, and regulatory and permitting pathways.
Challenge
- All eyes on market performance: A handful of high-profile closures and restructurings in 2025 tested assumptions around timelines, scale-up pathways, and downside risks. These sharpened investors’ focus on unit economics, sustainable demand signals, and credible paths to profitability.

Science and technology

Scientific feasibility

Bright spot
- Advancing mycoprotein strains to improve productivity and quality: Efforts to improve the longstanding mycoprotein species used in Quorn products accelerated in 2025. A research collaboration between NIAB and Marlow Foods (Quorn’s parent company) has identified important steps toward improved strain stability, productivity, and quality at scale.
Challenge
- Data standardization is needed: Bioprocesses could be ripe for AI/machine learning process optimization. However, data standardization is needed to enable cross-sector developments over siloed in-house solutions.

Engineering viability

Bright spot
- Continuous fermentation systems mature: A major signal this year came from Pow. Bio, in collaboration with Bühler, who demonstrated scalable, transferable continuous fermentation of high-value dairy proteins at 3,000L scale with ATV Technologies. The scale up achieved over threefold productivity gains and a 50 percent reduction in costs, enabled by Pow.Bio’s patent-pending continuous process technology and ML–based bioprocess control platform.
Challenge
- Further precision fermentation modelling is needed: Despite progress in benchmarking production costs, further precision fermentation modelling is needed to assess cost reduction strategies, such as continuous processes for protein production.

Innovation capacity

Bright spot
- Expanding publicly funded infrastructure: Newly launched and expanding research centers and facilities are strengthening translational, scalable innovation. Publicly funded infrastructure plays a key role in the de-risking process development and scale up for fermentation-derived products.
Challenge
- IP disputes signal commercialization risk: Recent years have seen multiple high-profile disputes in fermentation-derived products. Often, prolonged legal proceedings coincided with major business disruption or even company closures. While company exits occur in competitive markets, protracted IP conflicts around foundational technologies risk slowing sector-wide scaling.

Government and regulation

Public investment for fermentation-related research and commercialization is expanding

Governments concerned with supply chain constraints and product shortages are increasingly recognizing precision fermentation for its ability to produce specific animal proteins, like those found in dairy and eggs. Many governments—in China, the European Union, India, and more—implemented wide-ranging biotechnology plans, recognizing the potential benefits to the economy, food system, and national security.
Bright spot
- Legislation to support innovative food products: In December 2025, South Korea enacted the Food Tech Industry Promotion Act, establishing a legal and administrative framework for the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs (MAFRA) to support innovative food products, including fermentation-enabled products. The Act empowers MAFRA to provide direct support to businesses, offer startup assistance, facilitate access to research facilities and equipment, foster market entry, and enable co-navigation of regulatory processes.
Challenge
- Banning meat-related terms for alternative proteins in Europe: Following several months of debate and negotiations in 2025, EU policymakers agreed in March 2026 to ban the use of the word “meat” and 31 meat-related terms for fermentation-enabled, plant-based, and cultivated options despite consistent survey results demonstrating that European consumers support the use of these terms for plant-based products.

Find companies focused on fermentation

These companies focus primarily on fermentation for alternative proteins. This database is dynamically updated; the total number of companies may differ slightly from what has been reported in the State of the Industry report, as we continuously improve our dataset. This list is intended to be as comprehensive as possible, but should not be considered exhaustive. You can learn more about these companies in our company database.

Are we missing something? Let us know about an update to a company’s record by filling out our company database edits form or submitting a new company using this form.

Find production facilities focused on fermentation

These production facilities have fermentation-enabled alt protein capacity. This database is dynamically updated; the total number of facilities may differ slightly from what has been reported in the State of the Industry report, as we continuously improve our dataset. This list is intended to be as comprehensive as possible, but should not be considered exhaustive.

Are we missing something? Let us know by filling out this form to add a fermentation-enabled, alternative protein-focused production facility to the database.