Wildtype
Wildtype is a San Francisco–based cultivated seafood company co-founded by Justin Kolbeck and Aryé Elfenbein that produces sushi-grade salmon from cultured coho salmon cells; in 2025 it completed a pre-market safety consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Contents8 sections
Key facts
Late 2019Series A Funding
According to TechCrunch, Wildtype closed a $12.5 million Series A in late 2019 from investors including CRV and Maven Ventures.[1]
February 2022$100 Million Series B
The company announced a $100 million Series B led by L Catterton; new investors included Leonardo DiCaprio, Bezos ExpeditionsBezos ExpeditionsBezos Expeditions is Jeff Bezos’s personal investment platform, whose public portfolio spans the internet, enterprise software, life sciences, artificial intelligence, and robotics. Its investment activity is separate from Amazon’s corporate investments, and disclosed holdings include Business Insider, Skild AI, and Generalist.Open the full entry, Temasek, S2G Ventures, Robert Downey Jr.’s FootPrint Coalition and Cargill, and existing investors including Spark CapitalSpark CapitalSpark Capital is a U.S. venture capital firm founded in Boston in 2005, with offices in San Francisco, New York and Boston. Its early-stage and growth funds back technology businesses across fintech, enterprise software, AI and consumer products. Investments have included Twitter, Tumblr, Oculus, Plaid and Anthropic.Open the full entry, CRV, Maven, AiiM and Root Ventures also took part. The company said the money would go toward a larger production facility, lower costs and a bigger team.[2]
TechCrunch described it at the time as a six-year-old, San Francisco–based company with about 35 employees.[1]
May 28, 2025FDA Pre-Market Safety Consultation Completed
The FDA’s inventory of human food made with cultured animal cells shows that the agency issued its response letter on Wildtype Inc.’s cultured salmon cell material (species: coho salmon) on May 28, 2025, under CCC No. 005.[3]
2025Entering Restaurants
The company said it had completed FDA’s pre-market safety consultation and announced that its salmon was being served at Kann, chef Gregory Gourdet’s Haitian restaurant in Portland, Oregon, weekly from late May. Later posts on its blog announced launches at restaurants in Seattle, California and Tucson, Arizona, among other places.[4][5]
September 2025Suing Texas
After Texas’s SB 261, which bans the sale of cultivated foods, took effect, Wildtype announced that it and UPSIDE Foods would sue the state as plaintiffs; its Austin partner restaurant Otoko stopped selling its salmon to comply with the law.[6]
Founders and Mission
Related Organizations, Websites, and Public Accounts
Wildtype: Official website: https://www.wildtypefoods.com/ (opens in a new window)[7]
Sources
- Can $100 million get Wildtype’s cell-grown ‘sushi-grade’ salmon into the wild? (opens in a new window)
- Uncharted waters, full steam ahead (opens in a new window)
- Human Food Made with Cultured Animal Cells Inventory: CCC No. 005 (opens in a new window)
- Land ho! Wildtype is o-fish-ally on the menu at Kann! (opens in a new window)
- Blog (opens in a new window)
- Why we’re taking Texas to court (opens in a new window)
- Wildtype (opens in a new window)