Meatable’s research gets a second life through 80-terabyte donation to New Harvest

Meatable Co-founder Daan Luining has donated an 80-terabyte archive to New Harvest to preserve the company’s work for future researchers, telling the Cultured Meat Symposium in Amsterdam that he could not allow years of effort by its team to disappear when the business closed.

• Meatable’s 80-terabyte archive is being preserved by New Harvest.
• The company’s cell bank went to the Good Food Institute.
• Researchers are invited to discuss projects using the donated material.

Luining and New Harvest Executive Director Isha Datar wore party hats for their fireside discussion, celebrating the possibility of a new beginning for knowledge accumulated through a difficult chapter in cultivated meat development.

For Luining, who has worked in cultivated meat since 2013, the donation was a way to protect work undertaken by colleagues whose ambitions for the technology had extended well past the company itself.

“I couldn’t let that happen. I thought it was a terrible idea,” he said of the prospect of Meatable’s server rack being unplugged and its contents lost.

The archive proved considerably larger than either party initially expected. What Luining thought was around 10 terabytes turned out to be 80, bringing practical questions about storage, transfer costs and how unfamiliar researchers could navigate it.

The handover also renewed an existing connection. Luining had previously been an intern at New Harvest, and described the mission of making cultivated meat available to consumers as his motivation for preserving the work. Datar, meanwhile, was on maternity leave when the donation was arranged with her colleagues.

“This was a nice surprise when I got back,” she said.

It also represented much more than experimental results. Luining identified potential value in the company’s regulatory work, electronic laboratory notebooks and even an employee handbook developed with considerable care. Future companies might benefit from material that its creators had never expected to become a shared resource.

He described “some treasures and some pearls inside of it”, even as the team was still working out how others could find them.

Luining credited the former Meatable team, including colleagues attending the session, for the work behind the donation. His ambition had been to make cultivated meat ordinary enough that someone could buy a sausage without the occasion attracting applause or front-page coverage. “It would just be a normal thing,” he said.

Preserving the archive required decisions made before the company’s affairs were fully concluded. Luining said Meatable chose a controlled liquidation after deciding in December 2025 that another funding round was unlikely in the prevailing investment environment. Final documentation was completed in August 2026.

He described approaching potential buyers for the company’s assets before arranging their preservation. The company’s specialized cell types and production technology made it difficult to find another business that could simply take them over.

The data went to New Harvest, while the cell bank went to the Good Food Institute, which Luining said had relevant experience with cell banking and distribution. The intention was to retain materials that could support public research rather than see them discarded.

Datar said the donation had prompted New Harvest to consider how it could provide a similar home for knowledge from other closing companies. Working with Luining and open-science legal specialist Dr Andrew Rens, the organization developed a Knowledge Stewardship Agreement intended for use across jurisdictions.

New Harvest records Luining as the first signatory in July 2026. Its initiative is designed to preserve donated knowledge, organize it and ultimately support its reuse by researchers, nonprofits and companies.

But Datar said no other company had subsequently donated data by the time of the Amsterdam discussion. Approaches to other businesses revealed how difficult it could be to arrange a transfer once ownership, creditors and research partners were involved. Information could be dispersed among investors, laboratories and universities.

What Luining had done, she said, was “very unique and very special and very hard to do”.

The next task is to turn the archive into something useful. Datar cautioned that uploading thousands of unfamiliar files would not necessarily help anyone understand the experiments, images or decisions they recorded.

Former employees could help recover that context. A former Meatable colleague now working with New Harvest understood the company’s documentation, while another was bringing electronic laboratory notebook material to Datar on the day of the discussion.

The continuing relationships mattered as much as the transfer itself. People who knew why an experiment had been run or how a file had been named could help future users interpret records that might otherwise remain difficult to understand.

Datar said New Harvest was considering different approaches for different parts of the collection. Some research might be developed further with academic partners and published. Regulatory material would need more careful consideration, including advice on how to handle its relationship with regulators.

Artificial intelligence added another complication. Although the archive could potentially support new tools, Datar was concerned that applying AI to poorly understood files could generate misleading conclusions that would be difficult to check. Hosting, maintaining and distributing such a large collection also carried costs.

The material would therefore not appear immediately as an unrestricted download. Researchers with specific projects were encouraged to contact New Harvest, with Datar suggesting that direct conversations could provide a more useful route to access.

The experience also raised a question for founders before a business reaches its final months. Startups routinely plan for a successful exit, but could they also plan how their knowledge would survive if the company did not?

“And what if we planned the best version of the not good exit?” Datar asked.

Luining suggested a data pledge, while Datar described possibilities including a standard, certification or manifesto. These remained ideas for consideration rather than an established scheme. She said people working with insect and fungal foods had also approached New Harvest about preserving knowledge from closing businesses.

For now, the work depended on people willing to help others understand what had been saved. “I think the best way is the most human way, and it means talking to people,” Datar said. “It means personal relationships.”

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