SAN FRANCISCO and NORTON, VA. — San Francisco-based cultured meat producer, Orbillion Bio Inc., announced a new partnership with Solar Biotech on Dec. 7. As a leader in bioprocessing technologies, Solar Biotech will aid Orbillion in developing and scaling up production of Wagyu beef.

"At Solar Biotech, we develop world-class bioprocessing technology together with leading players in biotech,” said Alex Berlin, chief executive officer and chief technology officer at Solar Biotech. “We now want to bring our knowledge and decades of experience into creating real impact in the sustainable food tech space, and there is no better partner than the Orbillion Bio team.”

Together the companies plan to scale production to over 4 million lbs of beef annually.

"Orbillion’s innovative business model will bring to market the highest quality cell-cultured beef, while being cost competitive," said Patricia Bubner, CEO at Orbillion. "Our unique technology has already allowed us to produce meat that comes from non-GMO cells and that is free of fetal bovine serum (FBS), and by partnering with Solar Biotech we can move more swiftly to reach price parity."

Through the new partnership, Orbillion will be better equipped to reach its commitment of achieving price parity with traditional meat by 2026 and commodity pricing for beef by 2030. Solar Biotech is collaborating with Orbillion to reach a significantly higher production scale while keeping costs low.

The partnership will combine Orbillion’s proprietary cell culture platform with Solar Biotech’s scale-up bioprocess development capabilities and infrastructure, proprietary AI-driven bioprocess controlling software, new biosensing technologies, and vertically integrated engineering.

"We see our technical synergy with Orbillion as an opportunity to enter a rapidly growing higher value cellular agriculture segment, which will yield long term significant recurrent revenue for both parties with attractive profit margins,” Berlin said. “They bring significant expertise in world-class bioprocessing and food, and we are looking forward to investing in this partnership to bring cost-effective and nutritious foods to market."

Orbillion’s recent partnership with Luiten Food, announced in September, has also helped position the cultured meat producer to bring its meats to Europe by 2025.