Shiok Meats

Shiok Meats was a Singapore-based cellular agriculture company that grew crustacean meat — principally shrimp, lobster and crab — from animal stem cells rather than farming or catching animals. Stem cells were isolated from small samples of crustaceans and cultured in a nutrient broth, then progressively expanded through smaller into larger stainless-steel bioreactors in a food manufacturing setting until the accumulated cell mass was harvested and separated from the liquid to form meat. The company described itself as the world's first cultivated crustacean meat company and Southeast Asia's first cultivated seafood company. Its name derives from Singaporean slang meaning fantastic or enjoyable.

The company positioned its output as nutritionally, texturally and gustatorily comparable to conventional crustacean meat, produced without slaughter, antibiotics, overfishing, or exposure to ocean contaminants such as microplastics and mercury, and with lower land and water use. Its reported process grew minced shrimp meat in four to six weeks, versus up to six months for a conventional farm to raise an adult shrimp. Products were shown in applications such as shrimp dumplings, soups and crab cakes.

Shiok Meats reached prototype stage within six months of founding, showcased a cell-cultured shrimp dumpling in 2019, and later developed cultivated lobster. In 2023 it paused cultivated seafood development to focus on cell-cultured beef, citing tightened finances, and in March 2024 it was acquired by/merged with fellow Singapore company UMAMI Bioworks, which took over its crustacean research programme.

Founding story

Co-founders Sandhya Sriram and Ka Yi Ling were stem cell scientists who had worked at Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). Sriram, trained in stem cell biology and based in Singapore since 2009, circulated an opportunity for a technical co-founder for a startup using stem cells to make shrimp meat through the A*STAR postdoctoral society; Ling, who holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked as an A*STAR research fellow in developmental epigenetics, joined. In 2018 they observed that cell-based seafood companies were focused on fish such as salmon and tuna while no one addressed crustaceans, which are central to Asian cuisine and to APAC shrimp production and trade. Crustacean cell culture research was effectively non-existent, so they built the science from scratch, giving themselves 12 months to build the company and raise funds; a first prototype came within six months.

Business model

Business-to-business and business-to-consumer sale of cultivated crustacean meat was the intended model, with commercial launch planned via restaurants; sources describe the company as serving consumers and food manufacturers seeking sustainable protein. No revenue-generating commercial product launch is documented in the sources.

Not established in the sources; the company remained pre-commercial, in final phases of R&D as of 2023-2025 reporting, with production costs described as high because growth nutrients were pharmaceutically produced in small quantities and prices expected to remain at a premium for five to seven years.

Traction

Reported total funding of USD 30 million across investors from the USA, Europe, Singapore, Japan and South Korea (a third-party database records USD 31.0 million across four rounds). Milestones include a first prototype within six months of founding, a cell-cultured shrimp dumpling prototype in 2019, development of cultivated shrimp and lobster, an Enterprise Singapore Startup SG Tech Proof-of-Value grant, acquisition of cultivated red meat company Gaia Foods, a partnership with Japanese cellular agriculture company IntegriCulture on scaling cultured shrimp production, and an EU patent grant. The company remained pre-revenue and in final R&D phases before its 2024 acquisition.

Latest developments

In June 2023 Shiok Meats announced a pause in cultivated seafood development to focus on cell-cultured beef, attributed by CEO Sandhya Sriram to tightened finances. On 13 March 2024 UMAMI Bioworks announced its acquisition of Shiok Meats, giving it control of Shiok's cell-based crustacean research, including lobster and shrimp; Sriram said seafood alternatives would remain a priority for the combined entity and referenced a recently granted EU patent. Industry coverage in 2026 lists the transaction among consolidations in a contracting cultivated meat sector.