Cultured meat start-up Vow axes 30 per cent of workforce

“Sadly, this means today we will be saying goodbye to a number of Vowzers.”

Vow has nearly 100 staff, mostly based in Sydney, and had poached engineers from Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build towards Peppou’s lofty goal of creating one of the largest food companies in history.

The chief executive told this masthead it was “an incredibly difficult decision” that it “truly hurt to make”.

“Vow is pioneering success in an industry in which many companies have already failed, with more than 200 companies founded, over $3 billion invested, and still only three with regulatory approvals (one of which is Vow) to sell anywhere in the world,” Peppou said in a statement.

“That success is predicated on solving three main challenges: scale, market demand and market access. Vow is the only company in the world to have solved the first two of these challenges and is leading the world in market access. However, given the complexity and novelty of the regulatory process for cultured meat, it has taken far longer than initially expected to secure regulatory approval in the markets which Vow has targeted.

Loading

“The reality is that in order for Vow to continue to grow and thrive, we must get leaner and focus our entire efforts on activities that put our products into more markets and onto more consumers’ plates.”

Peppou said the redundancies were not a reflection on Vow’s staff but instead on what the start-up needs to achieve in the next two years.

“It is my sincere hope that they all choose to stay in our start-up ecosystem because I know they are exactly the calibre of individuals who make groundbreaking innovations possible, and I will do everything in my power to support them to find new roles.”

Vow’s primary investors, including Hostplus and Square Peg, were contacted for comment.

“Like many companies operating in highly technical environments and highly regulated markets, Vow has faced a challenging operating environment as it scales its mission globally,” a Blackbird spokeswoman said.

“Start-ups require incredibly difficult decisions to be made, and whilst this decision was the most logical thing for the company, it was not made lightly.

“We believe in Vow’s vision for entirely new foods and are confident in its road map to achieving this ambition.”

Loading

In a previous interview, Peppou outlined his vision for Vow to provide exciting new products targeted at meat eaters.

“We’re using cell-culture technology to create products that animals and traditional farming could never produce,” he said.

“Imagine a steak that tastes like venison but has the nutritional profile of salmon. That’s the kind of innovation we’re working toward.”

Vow’s move comes amid a challenging time for the broader alternative and plant-based meat sector, with investors admitting they overestimated consumer demand for the new products.

Less than 12 months ago “chicken-free chicken” start-up Sunfed closed its doors and halted sales of its products, which were available in Coles and Woolworths supermarkets. That company was also backed by Blackbird Ventures, and chief executive Shama Sukul Lee said investors, including the Australian venture capital behemoth, had written off her company.

“Essentially, a lot of venture capital investors jumped into the plant-based gold rush, thinking they could get fast valuation returns similar to what they’re used to in the virtual world,” she said at the time.

Loading

“The plant-based bubble burst and the category has been undergoing a reality check, and rightly so.”

In 2023, V2food, a joint venture between CSIRO’s venture capital fund Main Sequence Ventures and billionaire Hungry Jack’s founder Jack Cowin, closed its $20 million Wodonga facility and chief executive Nick Hazell departed the company. V2food opened the factory just two years earlier and employed 30 staff.