Dr. Uma Valeti

Chief Executive Officer & Founder, UPSIDE Foods

Dr. Uma Valeti is the CEO and Founder of UPSIDE Foods, the world’s leading cultivated meat company. UPSIDE Foods was the first company focused on growing meat directly from animal cells and has led the industry ever since. Since 2015, UPSIDE Foods has achieved numerous industry-defining milestones, including being the first company to produce multiple species of meat (beef, chicken and duck), to partner with the existing meat industry and to receive the world’s first green light from the U.S. FDA for a cultivated meat, poultry, or seafood product. UPSIDE Foods has raised over $600 million from a diverse coalition of investors including Richard Branson, John Mackey, Bill Gates, Temasek, ADG, Softbank, Threshold, Baillie Gifford, Norwest, Cargill, Tyson Foods and Whole Foods. Uma’s vision is to enable people around the world to eat the meat they love, while transforming the food system to become more sustainable and humane. At scale, cultivated meat is expected to use less land and water, emit significantly fewer greenhouse gases than conventionally produced meat, and transform animal welfare. Uma and UPSIDE Foods have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and NBC News, and Uma has spoken at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Milken Institute Global Conference and SXSW. In 2019 he was named a “Global Thinker of the Decade” by Foreign Policy magazine. Prior to founding UPSIDE Foods, Uma served at the Mayo Clinic as a practicing cardiologist. He is an adjunct professor in Cardiovascular Medicine at Stanford University.