Wildtype

No! We have developed a production process that does not require animal-derived components (including fetal bovine serum [FBS] and bovine serum albumin).

We use two natural colors: beta-carotene and lycopene. Both are carotenoids – the molecules that give wild salmon their characteristic red/orange color. As a bonus, both beta-carotene and lycopene are known for their antioxidant properties.

“Saku” is the Japanese term for a uniformly cut block of raw fish, perfect for slicing into sashimi. Wildtype salmon saku is the culmination of nearly a decade of research. The result is a cut of fish that's pure, flavorful, and kind to our seas.

Producing cultivated seafood at an accessible, mass market price has the potential to be an incredibly powerful tool in addressing food insecurity and protecting biodiversity across the globe. At this early stage, however, commercialization is incredibly challenging from a technological standpoint, and capital intensive from a financial standpoint. Our ability to introduce Wildtype salmon to a broader audience is limited by our current supply constraints.

With the fish numbers at historic lows, scientists, chefs and others are asking whether we should be eating them anymore, and what it means for the future of all wild salmon.

The Coho salmon, pinkish orange and streaked with lines of white fat, wasn’t wild-caught in Alaska or farmed in Chile. It comes from cells grown in tanks at a former microbrewery in San Francisco, and in late May it became the first cell-cultured seafood to receive safety approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

For media inquiries, please contact us at: media@wildtypefoods.com

Wildtype is an energetic, diverse, and inspiring team of world-class scientists, engineers, foodies and entrepreneurs. We share a collective passion for changing the food system.

Wildtype produces cultivated seafood, which is quite different from its plant-based counterparts. Plant-based seafood is made from 100% plant-based ingredients, specifically crafted to look and taste like the real thing. Because these products don’t contain any actual seafood, these foods are safe for people with seafood allergies and vegans alike.

Demand for seafood is increasing dramatically, compounded by a growing global population. Yet wild sources are already hitting a breaking point. With so much new demand, we need new tools to sustainably meet the food security challenges of this century.

Fish have been growing all by themselves well before humans came on the scene. So why go through all this work to do what nature does for us?

Wildtype is a cultivated seafood company. Our first product is a sushi-grade salmon saku. We believe cultivated seafood will be an important tool to combat the environmental challenges facing ocean health today, namely overfishing, pollution, and warming waters that are driving wild fish towards extinction.

Our brand is named after "wild type," a common biology term for "the phenotype of the typical form of a species as it occurs in nature." In layman’s terms, a “wild type” is just the natural state of a gene, unchanged by genetic modification or mutation. For example, the “wild type” form of a banana looks very different from the typical bananas we eat today because they’ve been selected and bred over thousands of years to look and taste a certain way.

We love connecting with like-minded people. Feel free to drop us a line, or give us a heads up if you’re interested in visiting us or learning more about what we’re working on.

We make Wildtype salmon in our Fishery, which is located in a repurposed microbrewery in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. We even retooled many of the existing brewing tanks for different parts of our production process. You can learn more about our Fishery in this video.

We're on a mission to defend Earth's wild places by inspiring a transition to clean and accessible seafood.

The use of this website and services on this website provided by Wildtype (hereinafter referred to as "Company") are subject to the following Terms & Conditions (hereinafter the "Agreement"), all parts and sub-parts of which are specifically incorporated by reference here. This Agreement shall govern the use of all pages on this website (hereinafter collectively referred to as "Website") and any services provided by or on this Website ("Services").

Wildtype’s lab-grown salmon is being sold for the first time anywhere in the world, according to the company’s CEO. The article describes the milestone as a culinary first and raises the question of whether politics could stall the product’s rise.

Jul 2025 · intrafish.comNews article

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves a new category of seafood products for the first time. Some consumers raise concerns about the approval.

Jun 2025 · TheStreetNews article

Wildtype raises $100 million to make sushi-grade cultivated salmon widely available in the US. The startup needs approval from the US Food & Drug Administration before it can sell the product to consumers.

Feb 2022 · AgFunderNewsNews article

Wildtype, a San Francisco-based company developing cultured salmon from cells outside the animal, raises $100 million in a Series B. The six-year-old company is developing salmon grown from cells, described in the headline as “sushi-grade.”

Feb 2022 · TechCrunchNews article