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Billionaire meat chase: Bill Gates, Peter Thiel are funding engineered burgers too

Billionaire meat chase: Bill Gates, Peter Thiel are funding engineered burgers too

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Video supercut Xbox Microsoft
Video supercut Xbox Microsoft

Google co-founder Sergey Brin forked over $325,000 of his own cash to fund the development of the world's first lab-grown burger — which went through a public tasting on Monday. But, as The Washington Post pointed out in a report today, Brin isn't the only tech industry billionaire to back genetically engineered food projects. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, and Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder, are both funding efforts to find new options to livestock-sourced meat. Gates has invested in a plant-based meat alternative being developed by a startup called Hampton Creek Foods. Thiel, meanwhile, has given a grant to a company called Modern Meadow that uses "tissue engineering" to create meat and leather from animal stem cells. Head over to the Post to read more about the opportunity these three entrepreneurs see and what they're doing about it.