Two of the biggest names in Southeast Asia’s alternative meat industry are looking to merge.

That’s right, it’s Shiok Meats and Umami Bioworks! The transaction is likely to close in the next few weeks.

• It’s a stock deal, where Umami Bioworks will acquire all of Shiok Meats’ assets.
• Shiok Meats’ founder, Sandhya Sriram will be leaving the company, while some Shiok Meats team members will join Umami Bioworks.
• The combined entity will be named Umami Bioworks, but they will still keep the Shiok Meats brand.

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🦐 Who’s Shiok Meats?

Shiok Meats grows crustacean meat like crab, lobster, and shrimp in labs through stem cells.

• Founded in 2018, they claim to be the first cell-based meat company in Southeast Asia and raised over $30M in funding.

They’ve had their challenges.

• In 2023, they lost over 50% of their team because of layoffs, restructuring, and team members leaving because of doubts about the company’s future.
• They also shared that they couldn’t commercialize or scale up crustaceans as fast as they thought.
• They acquired Gaia Foods in 2021, another Singapore based alternative meat company—that focused on red meat. After the acquisition, Shiok claimed to have “temporarily” shifted focus to red meat.
• As shared by Umami’s founder and CEO, he thinks that Shiok couldn’t see a clear path to raise the large amount of capital needed for them to hit their next phase.

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🧫 Who’s Umami Bioworks?

Formerly known as Umami Meats, they were founded in 2020 and also grow meat through stem cells.

• The difference? They focus on Endangered, Threatened, or Protected species that are tough to farm commercially (and sustainably) but are high in demand, like eel and grouper.
• They have raised $2.4M in funding.

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🤔 Why it makes sense

The merger allows Umami to grow their product portfolio and easily acquire the assets (like their tried-and-tested facilities) they need to scale up production.

• Since Shiok has worked on crustaceans, they see alignment with Umami’s work on endangered fish species.
• Shiok also has some of the hardware they need.