Munich Startup: What problem do you offer a solution for?
Florian Hüttner, Co-Founder: Global meat consumption continues to rise dramatically. At the same time, today's meat production is based almost entirely on a system that is thousands of years old: the animal. This system is increasingly reaching its ecological, ethical, and economic limits.
We are therefore developing a automated production platform For real animal muscle, meaning real meat without animal farming and slaughter. Our approach is not intended to completely replace traditional meat production in the short term, but rather to complement and relieve it step by step. Crucially, we don't simply produce cell mass, but functional muscle – precisely the tissue that meat biologically is. In the long term, we envision this as a new form of industrial muscle production that can operate with a similar level of automation and standardization as other modern production systems – and not just for animal muscle.
Munich Startup: What can you do as of today?
Florian Hüttner: To our knowledge, we are the only company worldwide to have produced contracting skeletal muscle from pigs using pluripotent stem cells. With this, we have demonstrated that genuine animal muscle – that is, real meat – can fundamentally be produced without animals.
What's particularly important is that we haven't just provided a scientific proof of concept, but have already produced real products together with an industrial meat producer. Together with the Hans Kupfer Group, we've integrated our cultured muscle into hybrid sausages, replacing 20 percent of the slaughter meat – without noticeably altering the product's taste, texture, or processing. This demonstrates for the first time that real cultured muscle can be directly compatible with existing industrial production lines.
Decades of research as a starting point
Munich Startup: What triggered the founding?
Florian Hüttner: The origin lies in decades of research in the field of tissue engineering at the University Medical Center Göttingen. Functional muscle tissue was originally developed there for medical applications. At some point, the central question arose: If it's possible to produce real functional muscle in the laboratory, why shouldn't it also be possible to produce real meat from it?
At the same time, it became clear that many companies in the cultivated meat sector focused on scaling and grand visions very early on, even though the scientific basis was often incomplete or even nonexistent. Our approach was therefore different from the outset: first produce real muscle, scientifically sound and reproducible, and only then discuss scaling.
Munich Startup: Was there ever a moment when you thought about giving up?
Florian Hüttner: Yes, absolutely. We were founded practically at the peak, or rather the turning point, of the cultivated meat hype. Many investors had previously poured enormous sums into companies built primarily on visions and pitch decks. When the technical challenges became apparent, the mood across the entire market shifted. This made it significantly more difficult, even for companies with a strong scientific foundation. The problem is: when other companies have burned through hundreds of millions of dollars, investors often initially pay little attention to whether someone has actually achieved a scientific breakthrough.
We see our results as a true milestone. We have shown that functional animal muscle from pluripotent stem cells is possible. This kind of progress cannot simply be accelerated with capital. We often say: You can't simply make up for 30 years of research with money.
Automated production of animal muscle is being pursued.
Munich Startup: How would you know in a year that you're on the right track?
Florian Hüttner: In a year, we would see that the industry has consolidated further, leaving only a few truly technologically relevant companies. Our next major milestone is the automated production of animal muscle. We are currently working intensively on this, particularly on AI-supported process control and automation. If we can demonstrate that real muscle can be produced in a standardized, reproducible, and increasingly automated way, that would be crucial proof for us that our approach works. Equally important would be having the right long-term partners and investors on board who understand that this is a deep-tech topic with a long-term perspective.
Myriameate Myriameat was founded in 2022 and develops technologies for producing genuine animal muscle tissue from pluripotent stem cells. The company originates from the scientific environment of the University Medical Center Göttingen and builds on more than 25 years of research in tissue engineering and stem cell biology. Myriameat was founded by Florian Hüttner together with scientific co-founders from Göttingen, including Wolfram Zimmermann and Malte Tiburcy. Among their recent scientific successes is the development of deer muscle cells from pluripotent stem cells – an important step towards cultured deer meat.
Munich Startup: Would you start a business in Munich again, and why?
Florian Hüttner: It depends. Munich was initially a logical location for us to found the company. I myself live in Bavaria, and Munich has a strong international reputation as a hub for innovation and technology. At the same time, Myriameat's scientific and operational base is clearly in Göttingen. That's where our laboratory environment, our scientific roots, and the technological expertise on which the company was built are located.
In general, Bavaria, and Munich in particular, has a very strong startup and deep tech environment with excellent universities, networks, and support structures. We also had good contacts with various players in this sector. However, in our experience, much depends heavily on the specific technology field and timing. In the venture capital world, hype cycles often move very quickly. If a topic is already considered "burnt" by the media or investors, it becomes difficult even for technologically strong companies—even if they are demonstrating genuine scientific progress. That's precisely what we experienced in our industry. Many well-known investors and big names invested enormous sums in the early hype phase. When the true complexity of the technology became apparent, the entire field was viewed much more critically.
From our perspective, this had less to do with Munich as a location and more to do with the general market phase. Our timing was certainly challenging in this respect. Nevertheless, we continue to believe that Germany, and Bavaria in particular, offers a strong environment for technology-driven companies – especially when thinking long-term.
Biotechnology takes time
Munich Startup: Bootstrapping or venture capital.
Florian Hüttner: Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. We are not a traditional trading or software company, but rather work on complex biological production, process development, and new industrial infrastructure. This requires time, research, and capital. At the same time, the industry has learned in recent years that biotechnology cannot simply be scaled like software. Many companies were geared very early on toward rapid growth and large-scale expansion, even though the technological foundations were not yet fully developed.
Therefore, from our perspective, it's less about raising as much capital as possible and more about finding the right partners. Long-term investors, family offices, and strategic industry partners who understand that deep tech and biotechnology development involve different time horizons and challenges than traditional software models are particularly important. Ultimately, success isn't determined by the speed of financing, but by whether the technology truly works scientifically and industrially.
