Google co-founder Sergey Brin is in the headlines for his investment in the development of the world's first lab-grown burger, but he is not the only tech billionaire to fund genetically engineered food products.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates are also funding efforts to find alternatives to livestock-sourced meat. Gates invested in Hampton Creek Foods, a startup company working on plant protein based egg substitutes, and has praised Beyond Meat, a meat substitute company. Thiel gave a grant to Modern Meadow, a company using animal stem cells in what it calls "tissue engineering" to create meat and leather via 3D printing. Brin invested in Mark Post, a professor out of Maastricht University, who used stem cells and a fetal serum to grow meat in his lab.
