Agribusiness  May 15, 2025

Meati closing in on deal to sell meat-alternative biz for paltry $4M

Boulder firm had raised about $400M before collapse

Meati Thornton facility.
Meati’s Thornton facility is shown in this image. Courtesy Meati.
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BOULDER — Boulder-headquartered Meati Foods, a mushroom-based whole-food proteins producer that has raised about $400 million from investors in recent years prior to its sudden financial implosion this spring, could soon be sold for about $4 million.

The potential sale, revealed last week in Adams County District Court documents, comes after a decision in March to lay off 150 workers and close its massive production facility in Thornton.

Meati, a trade name used by Emergy Inc., creates high-protein, high-fiber and nutrient-dense meats using mycelium — the muscular root structure of fungi — as its single main ingredient. Unlike traditional meat alternatives, which typically attempt to mimic products such as chicken nuggets or ground beef, Meati’s products replicate whole cuts of meat such as chicken breasts, steak, jerky and pork tenderloin.

Meati’s 100,000-square-foot production facility in Thornton, dubbed the “mega ranch,” was expected to have production capacity in the tens of millions of pounds, the company said when the factory opened in 2023.

Court filings show that Meati CEO Phillip Graves recently assigned the company’s assets to Wadsworth Garber Warner Conrardy PC attorney Aaron Garber in preparation for a potential sale, details of which remain somewhat murky. 

The potential buyer, according to court documents, is Meati Holdings Inc., an entity that is not described further in the filings and does not appear on the Colorado Secretary of State’s registered business database. Meati did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. 

After the company was “extensively marketed … but no purchase offers were received,” Meati, along with it “its principal secured creditor, Trinity Capital Inc., and a proposed buyer Meati Holdings Inc., negotiated the principal terms of an asset purchase agreement,” according to a court filing from Garber.

The filing continued: “The various parties and stake-holders anticipated that the sale of the Company will be as a going concern to the Buyer for approximately $4 million. The Assignee believes that the proposed sale of the Company as a going concern is preferable to a liquidation” for a number of reasons, including that “(s)elling the Company as a going concern will likely generate a higher overall price than selling assets piecemeal in a liquidation” and fewer employees could lose their jobs if a buyer takes over the entirety of the Meati business. 

“In short, a going-concern sale will preserve the operational value of the Company, maximize recovery for creditors, and reduce collateral damage to stakeholders and interested parties when compared to a liquidation,” Garber’s filing said. 

Meati claimed in a court filing last week that the company has $158 million in assets — a total that vastly exceeds the potential $4 million sales price. 

Additionally, “it is estimated that the fair market value of the Company as a going-concern is significantly less than the total amount owed to the Company’s principal secured creditor,” according to court documents. 

The company’s products began being sold in retail outlets in July 2022, the same month that Meati raised a $150 million Series C round. 

Meati has attracted a number of high-profile investors, including Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, celebrity chef Rachael Ray; chef and founder of Momofuku and Majordomo Media, David Chang; the co-founders of restaurant chain sweetgreen, Nicolas Jammet and Jonathan Neman; and former White House senior policy adviser for nutrition Sam Kass.

In early 2024, Meati replaced co-founder Tyler Huggins as CEO with Phil Graves, who had been recently hired as the company’s chief financial officer. 

Under the previous leadership regime, Meati officials made bold revenue predictions. In 2023, soon after the mega-ranch in Thornton opened, company leaders said Meati could record $1 billion in annual sales by 2025.

Prior to the 150 layoffs in March, the company laid off an undisclosed number of employees in at least three rounds of job cuts over the past few years.

“We are taking this action because our lender unexpectedly removed cash from our accounts and took control of the remaining cash reserves on Friday, Feb. 28, 2025, and the action was not reasonably foreseeable,” Meati wrote in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice filed in March with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. “Based on this action, we do not have sufficient funding to continue operating. The result of the lender’s unexpected action is that we have to shut down a manufacturing facility.”

Even after those layoffs and the Thornton factory closure, Meati officials were projecting optimism about the company’s product.

“We firmly believe in our mission and that mycelium will change the protein paradigm,” a Meati spokesperson told BizWest in a March email. “While we’re unclear on the future, we hope for the sake of consumers and the planet that Meati’s mission will endure.”

Boulder-headquartered Meati Foods, a mushroom-based whole-food proteins producer that has raised about $400 million from investors in recent years prior to its sudden financial implosion this spring, could soon be sold for about $4 million.

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A Maryland native, Lucas has worked at news agencies from Wyoming to South Carolina before putting roots down in Colorado.
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