“On August 5, 2013, a man and a woman ate a burger. Not just any burger: a world-historical burger, made from cattle cells grown in a lab by Mark Post.”
Sergey Brin paid $330,000 for a five-ounce patty and the industry spent the next decade promising to topple American meat by 2030. Billions poured in. The factories never got built, the workforce never existed, and the regulatory path never cleared. It was a demo that kept raising money for thirteen years.