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Magic Valley CEO Paul Bevan describes a new partnership with US-based machine learning company Pythag Tech as a "game-changer" for its plans to commercialise cultivated meat.
As the company behind the world’s first cultivated lamb using iPSC (induced pluripotent stem cell) technology, Melbourne-based Magic Valley is currently out to raise $3 million for an Australian manufacturing facility and this year showed off its signature pork dumplings and lamb meatballs at a taste testing in NSW Parliament.
Soon after that event, another cultivated meat company Vow received a breakthrough approval from food regulation authorities for its cultured quail.
Amidst a groundswell for this emerging food category, Magic Valley is working with Pythag Tech to supercharge its scale-up using AI-powered bioprocess optimisation
By embedding Pythag Tech’s advanced machine learning platform into its operations, Magic Valley aims to further reduce production costs, enhance process efficiencies and accelerate its path to commercial scale, ultimately bringing cultivated meat closer to widespread availability.
"This partnership is a game-changer for our commercial roadmap," says Bevan.
"We’re using AI to unlock real-time precision, cut costs, and reach scale faster – all without compromising our values or product integrity."
The company claims that if these efforts prove successful they will reduce waste and manual experimentation, accelerate commercial readiness by shortening R&D timelines, and build robust, auditable data infrastructure for regulatory and quality assurance (QA) compliance.
"Cultivated meat companies need to move beyond science projects into scalable systems," adds Pythag Tech CEO Sami Nabulsi.
"Our machine learning platform gives Magic Valley the intelligence layer it needs to lead that transition."
Magic Valley’s products are created using cutting edge stem-cell science to grow “real pork” and “real lamb” without the need for animal slaughter.
The technology harmlessly takes a cell from a living animal, reprograms it into a pluripotent stem cell, which grows into real pork muscle and fat.
In 2022, Magic Valley became the first company globally to produce animal component-free cultivated lamb using pluripotent stem cells. A year later the company launched its cultivated pork mince.
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