Multus

Multus is a biotechnology firm that develops and supplies cost-effective, animal-free cell culture media, positioning itself as a key enabler for the cultivated meat industry. The company was founded in 2019 and officially started in 2020 by a team from Imperial College London: Cai Linton (CEO), Reka Tron, Kevin Pan, and Brandon Ma. The founders combined their expertise in bioengineering, data science, and synthetic biology to address a major bottleneck in the cellular agriculture sector: the high cost and ethical concerns associated with traditional growth media, which often rely on fetal bovine serum (FBS). The company's core technology is a platform that integrates high-throughput robotic automation, machine learning (ML), and AI-driven experimental design to accelerate the development of growth media formulations. This data-centric approach, which uses Bayesian optimization and other AI models, allows Multus to rapidly test thousands of ingredient combinations and holistically optimize for multiple objectives, such as cost, performance, and scalability. By engineering its own proteins and using its ML platform, the company significantly reduces the time and expense of creating custom, serum-free media, a process that can traditionally take years. Multus serves biomanufacturing companies, with a primary focus on the cultivated meat, poultry, and seafood sectors. Its business model includes selling off-the-shelf products, developing custom media formulations as a service for clients, and supplying individual high-value ingredients like growth factors. The company's first major product, Proliferum M, is a serum-free solution designed to grow muscle, fat, and connective tissue cells from various species. It has since launched other formulations, like Proliferum P for porcine cells and Proliferum B for bovine cells, which match or exceed the performance of FBS at a reduced cost. Since its inception, Multus has achieved several key milestones. After starting in Imperial's Advanced Hackspace, the company participated in accelerators like IndieBio and the EIT Food Accelerator Network. It secured £1.6 million in a seed round in 2021, which supported the launch of Proliferum M. In January 2023, Multus announced a $9.5 million (£7.9 million) Series A round, led by Mandi Ventures and including investors like SOSV, Big Idea Ventures, and Asahi Kasei. This funding, which included a competitive €2.5 million grant from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator, is being used to build a manufacturing facility in the UK to produce food-safe growth media at scale. Keywords: cell culture media, growth media, cultivated meat, cellular agriculture, biomanufacturing, AI, machine learning, automation, biotechnology, serum-free media, animal-component-free, food technology, Proliferum, fetal bovine serum replacement, growth factors, formulation, bioprocess, Cai Linton, Imperial College London, sustainable food, cell-based meat, synthetic biology