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If youve been eager to try cultivated meatmeat grown from cells, without the need to raise an entire animalyour options, so far, have been limited. The innovation has only appeared on a handful of restaurant menus since its approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) But if youre in the Bay Area, youre in luck: Cultivated meat startup Mission Barns will be selling its pork meatballs (made with a base of pea protein plus the companys cultivated pork fat) at Berkeley Bowl West, one location of an independent grocery store in California. [Photo: Mission Barns] It marks the first retail sale of cultivated meat in the United States, though the products are available for just one day only: Saturday, November 1. That said, those in the area will have more chances to try Mission Barnss cultivated meat products. Along with the one-day sale, the company is hosting four in-store tastings at Berkeley Bowl, offering samples of its pork meatballs on November 1, January 17, and February 21, plus tastings of its cultivated pork salami on December 12. [Photo: Mission Barns] Cultivated meat in restaurants Cultivated meat (also called cell-cultured meat or lab-grown meat, though some in the industry contest that moniker) is still a nascent field. Mission Barns first launched in 2018. Others like Upside Foods, which makes cultured chicken, and Wildtype, which develops cultivated fish, have been around just a little longersince 2015 and 2016, respectively. U.S. regulators approved the first sales of cultivated meat in 2023. And since then, a variety of call-cultured options have made a few brief appearances on restaurant menus. (That move followed Singapores 2020 approval of cultivated meat, and cultured meat has been sold both in restaurants and in retail in Singapore, like in the frozen section of a butchery.) The Michelin-starred Bar Crenn in San Francisco briefly sold Upsides chicken. Chef José Andrés piloted cultured chicken from Good Meat (owned by Eat Just) at his China Chilcano DC eatery. Otoko, a sushi restaurant in Austin, Texas, offered Wildtype salmon last summer (but stopped selling it after Texas lawmakers enacted a cultivated meat ban). Mission Barns, too, debuted its cultivated pork meatballs and bacon at a few exclusive dinners at Fiorella in San Francisco this past September. But cultured meat hasnt yet been sold in a grocery store in the United States, until November 1. Mission Barns CEO Cecilia Chang says the startup picked Berkeley Bowl for this milestone because it has a track record for innovation; its been an early adopter of new plant-based brands. A 12 pack of the cultivated pork meatballs will be on sale for $13.99. Mission Barns CEO Cecilia Chang [Photo: Mission Barns] Mission Barns’s focus on fats Though a handful of statesincluding Texas, Florida, and Alabamahave moved to ban cultivated meat even before its widespread availability, Chang doesnt see cultured meat as controversial. I think people don’t know that much about it, she says. The in-store tasting series is a way to build up that consumer awareness and education. Mission Barns is collaborating with researchers from Tufts Universitys Center for Cellular Agriculture, who will observe the tastings to see how people react and talk about such products in a setting outside of a focus group. Mission Barns hopes to get crucial insights, too. Though the startup has created a handful of products under its own namelike meatballs, bacon, pepperoni, and salamiit doesnt ultimately aim to be its own brand. Instead, its a B2B company, focused on selling its cultivated fats as ingredients to consumer packaged goods partners. That focus on fat makes Mission Barns unique in the cultivated space; the startup isnt creating entire cuts of cultured meat like other companies. Fat is really where a lot of that delicious, meaty, umami flavor comes from, Chang says. And Mission Barns sees these fats as a next generation functional flavoring ingredient that can go into alternative proteins or other savory applications. [Photo: Mission Barns] Through the cell cultured process, the company can also tune its process to tweak nutrition details, like lowering the saturated fat and cholesterol or adding in more omega 3s. That includes plant-based meats like Mission Barnss meatballs and bacon, or possibly soups, sauces, and so on. The products that will be on offer at Berkeley Bowl are like a proof of concept for cultivated fat as an ingredient, and a way to show other CPG companies what Mission Barns can offer. Working with established food brands also means Mission Barns wont have to focus on building up its own brand, retail partners, and so on. From our perspective, B2B is a much faster way to scale and grow, Chang says. The startup already has partnerships in the works, though couldnt name specific companies. For those who taste its offerings at Berkeley Bowl and want to know how to be customers in the future, “We’ll be telling them to watch the space, Chang says. Well hopefully be launching something in retail with a partner sometime next year.
Category:
E-Commerce
In April 2025, Lucy Guo became the youngest female self-made billionaire after Meta paid $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in Scale AI, the company she cofounded with Alexandr Wang in 2016. Though Guo had left the companywhich builds infrastructure and software to create AI applicationsover disagreements with Wang in 2018, she retained her 5% stake in the business, which skyrocketed in value after Meta’s investment. In 2022 she reemerged with Passes, a platform that helps creators monetize their social media followings by selling access to exclusive offeringsfrom products and merch to pay-by-the-minute private phone calls. As of February, the company has raised a total of $49 million. Guo tells me that Passes is growingits payments to creators have totaled nine figures so farand profitable. But its expansion has come with some controversy. In 2024, Passes was sued by rival platform Fanfix over alleged anti-competitive practices, and since February it has been facing a class-action lawsuit accusing it of distributing child pornography. We talked about the lawsuits, as well as what her platform offers creators that they can’t get on Patreon or even OnlyFans. She says the platform’s main differentiator is that her long-term vision for Passes isn’t just engagement, it’s . . . . . . using AI to grow creators’ earning potential and then managing their wealth. Why did you found Passes? I wanted to create a platform where creators could monetize their brand. Creators have such super fans that there’s no customer acquisition cost when it comes to marketing a product, which is unique. The best example was when Kylie [Jenner] made a lot of money through her lipstick brand, and her marketing plan was literally “I’m just going to drop it and people are going to buy it.” Then we saw these other brands pop up like Logan Pauls Prime, and even Mr. Beasts with Feastables, that makes up most of his net worth. I was actually debating whether to start off with a platform like Passes or build something like a YC Safe( a Simple Agreement for Future Equity document developed by Y Combinator to help early-stage startups raise capital from investors), where creators would be able to get equity into brand deals that they work with. Why did you consider that option? It is the way to long-term generational wealth. Equity is more important than upfront cash, and I don’t think Hollywood and managers necessarily understand equity yet. No creators would listen to us if we pushed on equity unless we started making them money. The reason creators listen to their managers is that the manager is their main source of incomeso we needed to become their main source of income. Over COVID, I noticed a lot of friends were making money from Patreon or Buy Me a Coffee. I thought it was the perfect time for creators to connect with their fans and offer an exclusive, authentic experience, and I wanted create the infrastructure for that. What differentiates passes from say, a Patreon or an OnlyFans? Quite a lot. We have paid livestreams, paid one-on-one calls where fans pay per minute. You can sell your own merchandise or you can create merchandise on our website and sell it without having to own inventory. We’re building out new features in the fintech space. We offer health insurance. We want to create these unicorn creators and get into wealth management. Say a creator is on OnlyFans or Patreon, how do you convince them to switch over to Passes? We don’t compete with OnlyFansthey’re a completely different platform. We don’t allow nudity, so when someone’s on OnlyFans, we tell them that if they switch over to Passes, theyre probably not going to make any money. There are plenty of non-pornographic content creators on OnlyFans. Yeah, for sure. But even if they’re doing other stuff, I think their fan base has the hope of getting something else. Because of that, people are willing to spend more on OnlyFans because they just know they’re not going to get anything on Passes. As for Patreon, the pitch is pretty easy. We take less of a percentage from creators earnings, we have more features, so there’s more ways to monetize. We’ve seen creators switch over from Patreon and make 30 times more. Youve said elsewhere that creators who make a lot of money on Passes often have something like 100,000 followers on social media. The most-followed people in the world dont necessarily have the closest relationships with their fans. Why is that? Creators that have millions of followers are very busy. They’re focused on shooting movies or flying out for brand deals. Creators that have between 100,000 and a million followers aren’t getting as many opportunities. They’re desperate for a way to monetize their fan base, and they happen to have more superfans because they’re creating more content to gain traction and grow their follower numbers. They’re creating more content, and more content equals more money. There was a 2024 lawsuit brought on by another creator platform, Fanfix, which alleged that Passes used confidential information to post clients and made misleading claims about creators’ earnings on the platform. That obviously doesn’t match up with what you just said. I’m used to San Francisco and the tech industry, where you’re competing off of merit and everyone’s just trying to create the best product possible. Hollywood is very litigious and in the Hollywood scene, people are willing to make up lies in order to compete. You’re also currently being sued in a class action suit over claims that Passes knowingly distributed child sexual materials. How are you responding to that case? We did our own internal investigation and found that the claims and the case do not match up with evidence that we have found thus far. I think this is just another one of those scenarios where people are trying to shake us down and attempt to get money. That case was dismissed in Florida. [Editor’s Note: The lawsuit was dismissed in Florida, but transferred to California, where it remains active.] You did make changes to the platform as a result, though. Now people under 18 cant join. We had the idea that everyone should be able to monetize. When you look at YouTube, a lot of families are monetizing their content. But at the end of the day, it was a handful of creators that generated near 0% of revenue on Passes. So we decided it was very risky and just not worth it. Youre a high-profile founder. What is it like for you personally when legal challenges come up? Now I’m immune to it. I was very surprised at first. What IÙve learned in lawsuitsand this blew my mindis that you have to assume everything in the claim is true and try to poke legal holes in that. You can’t just hand over proof that the allegations are wrong and move on. That just makes it so easy for people to sue off others of complete lies. I think the hope when people do that is that the cost of another party defending the lawsuit is greater than just settling. I refuse to settle because I would rather spend more and prove things are not true. What can you say about the future of Passes? Wealth management. Creators always ask us, how do I turn passive income into passive equity? Who are the best wealth managers to work with? How do I set myself up for life? This is all stuff we should just be able to do. We’ve already paid out creators nine figures. Every time we send a payout to their bank account, we have to pay a fee. It just makes sense for us to be a bank because then we can give them high-yield savings accounts. Do you have any predictions about the creator economy? The creator economy is growing, and we are going to see more creators in the future just because trends follow kids. When you talk to kids nowadays, they all want to be creators. We’re going to be seeing a lot more creators, especially in a range where we monetize well, which is the 100,000-follower range. What do you think about this emergent class of AI-generated “talent”I’m thinking of figures like the AI actor Tilly Norwoodin the context of Passes and the creator economy? I am not that bullish on AI creators. There have already been a few and everyone thought it was going to be the next big thing, but really we got Lil Miquela and some others. What’s much more likely to happen is that people are going to be licensing their likeness out so they can spend more time creating content and interacting with their fans. For example, if a brand wanted to fly me out, I could just license my likeness out instead of that. I could scale myself better so I have more time to do things that I love. We’re not going to see AI creators replace actual creators because it’s hard to have a human connection with someone that you know is fake. Do you think you can have a human connection with a licensed image of a creator? I think so. But you can’t dilute your brand too much. At the end of the day, it’s still that creator you have a connection with. You’re following them on Instagram and you love them. How are you using AI to connect creators with the right brand deals? We have a feature called smart pricing that basically automatically prices pieces of content creators make based off factors like fan history and the type of content it is, to help optimize their earnings. When creators use this, their earnings go up by 3x usually. Hopefully this quarter, we’re rolling out AI agents for creators. We want creators to be able to focus on creating content. These agents do everything from AB test captions to scheduling mass messages and running strategy under pages. Do you think we’re in an AI bubble? I don’t think we’re in an AI bubble. Valuations are higher now because you can build companies at a lower cost. I was in San Francisco other week, and there was this company that scaled from zero to $90 million in revenue in four months. They have Cursor AI doing 99% of their code. Because of all these AI tools you now need less money to get to scale. Valuations are predictive. It’s like, okay, we’re going to give you 10x what revenue is because we believe you’re going to be a 100x revenue. And I think a lot of investors are thinking this way. You don’t need to burn as much capital to get there.
Category:
E-Commerce
Its official: Samsung has found a way to turn fridges into giant, unavoidable ads. In a move that comes as a shock to pretty much no one, Samsung announced on October 27 that its premium line of Family Hub fridges, which each come with a giant, AI-powered, embedded screen, will start displaying a widget featuring curated ads. By early November, anyone in the U.S. who owns a Family Hub fridge with a 21.5″ or 32″ screen will start seeing the ads, even if they bought the appliance well before the news was announced. Commenters on Reddit and Tiktok are reacting with outraged shock to the concept of their kitchens becoming the next venue for the performance of late-stage capitalism, and for good reason. But the fact that Samsung has made this move isnt exactly surprising, despite the fact that it explicitly promised not to do so mere months ago. When we incorporate screens into every mundane aspect of our daily routines, it stands to reason that companies will view those tiny, coveted windows into our everyday lives as an advertising opportunity. A Samsung Family Hub model fridge in-situ. [Photo: Samsung] Samsung walks back its promise Back in April, Samsung told The Verge that it had no plans to incorporate ads into its series of screen-ified fridges, washers, driers, and ovens. By September, though, it had already walked that promise back. In a statement to Android Authority at the time, Samsung shared, As part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen that value, we are conducting a pilot program to offer promotions and curated advertisements on certain Samsung Family Hub refrigerator models in the U.S. market. Now, according to Samsungs new announcement, fridge ads will begin appearing in the form of a widget that also cycles through weather, news, and calendar updates. In a statement to Fast Company, Samsung clarified that users will have the option to turn the widget off entirely via their settings, or dismiss certain ads at will. Still, the feature is rolling out automatically to everyone who already owns the fridge and chooses to update its software, despite the fact that nearly all customers bought these appliances before they knew that such a feature was a real possibility. If this was really a user-centered UX, shouldn’t they get to opt-in to ads, rather than be forced to opt-out? For now, the ads are only related to Samsung products and services. But Samsung hasnt exactly promised that the ads will stay internal. In an interview with The Verge, Shane Higby, Samsungs head of home appliance business in the U.S., said that future promotions will depend on the feedback and insights gained from the program. Higby added that the current ads are contextual or non-personal and that the fridges are not collecting personal information or tracking consumers. (In other words, your fridge isnt keeping track of how many carrots you have left in order to sell you more carrots.) Still, users have reason to feel a bit wary about that possibility, given that major companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon have all faced recent lawsuits alleging that their home devices were eavesdropping on users. Samsung told Fast Company that the ad program is part of an effort to “strengthen the value” of its home appliances for customers, but it’s unclear exactly what value customers get out of this supposed exchange. The writing was always on the wall Online, reactions to the Samsung Family Hub fridge ad feature are overwhelmingly poking fun at the dystopian idea of an appliance thats trying to sell you something. One TikTok video from September with more than half a million likes shows a man trying to open a locked fridge with the caption, POV: its 2025 and you forgot to pay your Samsung fridge subscription fee so now you have to watch 67 unskippable ads to retrieve a glass of choccy milk. On the subreddit r/technology, most users are in agreement that, if a fridge is going to try to sell ads, it should cost significantly less than a normal fridge, not more. I am definitely paying 5x for a fridge that solicits me! one user joked. Can it also target specific ads to all my family members? or maybe that is the $6000 fridge that I need? Can I get an add-on option where it also keeps food cold? Another added, Fridge should be $100 (delivered!) then if they expect me to put up with that crap. These reactions are certainly a fair response to Samsung trying to sell you a microwave while youre just trying to grab a snack. But the writing was probably always on the wall for a company that started replacing physical buttons on almost all of its appliances with smart screensand has literally made its modern tagline Screens Everywhere. As consumers, its our job to show Samsung that were not intrested in seeing our own kitchens turn into a marketing opportunityand we can do that by collectively opting to purchase regular old appliances that couldnt advertise to us if they tried.
Category:
E-Commerce
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