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Graveyard

Meati Foods
Meati Foods, a Boulder mycelium-meat maker that had raised more than $450 million, collapsed as an independent operating company in 2025. In late February 2025 it breached a revenue-and-gross-profit covenant on its debt, and lender Trinity Capital swept roughly two-thirds of its available cash while the company was mid-way through an internal funding round meant to extend runway into 2026. The cash sweep forced WARN-notice layoffs across its workforce and pushed the company into an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors process. Its business assets were sold for about $4 million, disclosed in May 2025 court filings; a new owner, Meati Holdings, subsequently took over and continued operating the brand, but the original venture-backed entity was effectively wound down.
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Believer Meats
Believer Meats, the Israeli-founded cultivated-meat company formerly known as Future Meat Technologies, abruptly ceased operations in December 2025 after raising more than $387 million since its 2018 founding. The shutdown came despite major milestones earlier that year: a 'No Questions' safety letter from the US FDA and completion of a large Wilson, North Carolina production facility, billed as one of the world's biggest cultivated-meat plants, that the USDA had cleared for operation. At a November town hall, employees were told the company was seeking eleventh-hour funding; when that capital did not materialize, mass layoffs followed around December 1. The collapse left the finished mega-factory idle and triggered a reported $34 million lawsuit from contractor Gray Construction over unpaid construction bills.
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The Supplant Company
The Supplant Company — legal entity Cambridge Glycoscience Ltd (UK company 10620297) — collapsed into administration in 2025. Despite raising more than £25 million since 2017, its 'sugars from fiber' sweetener never scaled: peak revenue was only around $1 million against roughly £21.4 million of net liabilities, plus about $2 million owed to trade creditors and a $3.6 million venture-debt loan from Western Technology Investment. The company was put up for sale in August 2025 seeking a rescue buyer for offers over £2.5 million, and administrators Grace Jones and Rishi Karia of Parker Andrews were appointed on 8 September 2025 (The Gazette notice 4960196). In October 2025 the entity was renamed to '100314 LIMITED' — the standard step freeing the trading name for sale — and no confirmed going-concern buyer emerged. Founder Tom Simmons moved on to German sugar group Pfeifer & Langen, and the supplant.com domain stopped resolving.
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Zume
Zume, founded in 2015 as a robot-powered pizza maker by Julia Collins and Alex Garden, raised roughly $445 million, including about $375 million from SoftBank in 2018 at a reported $2.25 billion valuation. Its signature model of cooking pizzas in automated, GPS-equipped ovens inside delivery vans proved capital-intensive and never reached profitability. In 2020 the company abandoned food entirely, acquiring packaging maker Pivot and pivoting to compostable food packaging while laying off more than 500 staff, including its whole robotics and delivery-truck teams. The packaging pivot also failed to become a viable business, and in June 2023 Zume became insolvent and shut down, liquidating its assets and ending one of the most heavily funded experiments in food robotics.
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