Pythag Tech uses AI to direct lab experiments for cultivated meat

Pythag is aiming at media, cell lines and bioprocessing together. CEO Sami Nabulsi described the loop to FoodIngredientsFirst on Oct. 26: hypotheses drawn from public data, wet-lab experiments run at scale, and then machine learning proposing what to try next.

Academic work lends the idea some support. A 2025 Nature Communications paper reported that Bayesian optimization, a statistical method for choosing the most informative next experiment, completed media optimization in about one to 1.5 months, using roughly 90 experiments across seven iterations. A Nature Reviews Chemistry review published July 31, 2026 said self-driving labs are maturing across domains, though structural barriers remain. And a 2026 Frontiers review of autonomous food bioprocessing found no industrial-scale, fully autonomous food processes yet.

Nabulsi is candid about the industry's record. "Cultivated meat overpromised and underdelivered," he told vegconomist on Oct. 29, adding that "business models were set up poorly and forced companies into ultra-fast R&D… just to keep up."

What Pythag Sells, and Who Is Behind It

The company describes a generative-AI platform trained on in-house experimental datasets covering cells, media and bioprocess conditions. Its website says it is "building the intelligence layer needed for cultivated meat production."

It does not intend to sell meat. "We're not making meat. We're enabling meat producers to diversify their revenue streams by manufacturing cultivated meat," the company says on its site. Nabulsi told FoodIngredientsFirst that partners "don't have to build a lab or hire a data team to find out whether cultivated meat can work for them."

On results, he told vegconomist: "We've brought media cost down to a small fraction of what commercial media costs while maintaining strong cell growth." No specific figure was provided in the material reviewed for this article, so the claim rests on Pythag's word alone.

Nabulsi is a former Morgan Stanley trader and an advisor to VegTech Invest and Nanobionic. CTO Haytham Samad is a senior engineering manager at Google and a former CTO of PEAK6. Dr. Anne-Sophie Mertgen, the chief R&D officer, founded the Y Combinator-backed Micro Meat and holds a PhD in biomedical engineering from ETH Zurich. Chief Science Officer Dr. Tiziano Barberi has more than 30 years in stem cell and muscle biology and founded Lab Farm Foods.

Shane Lewin, VP of AI at GSK Drug Discovery, and Brett Icahn of the Icahn Enterprises board are among its advisors.

A Crowded Field of Shovel-Sellers

Pythag is hardly alone in applying data tools to the problem. AgFunderNews has described a broader pivot toward "picks and shovels" businesses in software, media and contract manufacturing.

Pythag's own track record includes an Aug. 7, 2025 partnership with the Australian company Magic Valley, in which its ML platform was integrated to optimize media and scale-up, Protein Production Technology International reported.

Others are working nearby:

• Multus: The UK media maker said on its blog that it used active learning and automation to deliver food-grade basal media products in 2025.
• Uncommon and SPT Labtech: The pair presented automated imaging with AI analysis for media optimization at SLAS 2025.
• Ark Biotech: The U.S. company is pivoting toward agentic software for bioprocess scaling, according to its Sept. 3, 2026 blog post, and AgFunderNews reported it is monetizing that software with pharma.
• Culture Biosciences: It sells cloud-connected bioreactors paired with software.
• Nutreco: It opened a food-grade powder basal media facility in Boxmeer, the Netherlands, on July 29, 2024.

What the Seed Money Buys

Pythag plans to spend the funding on automation equipment, more wet-lab data production, and hiring in wet lab and AI roles. It also intends to open a second lab in Thailand; its existing lab is in Melbourne, Australia.

The headwinds are real. The UK Food Standards Agency's consumer tracker found 56% of respondents unwilling to include cell-cultivated meat in their diets in an October 2025 snapshot, with about 29% willing. Italy bans its production and marketing, and Florida and Alabama have banned cell-cultured meat.

GFI's 2026 report expects a continued need for public and philanthropic co-investment, with enabling infrastructure and business-to-business models likely to lead progress. Pythag has bet on that model.

BlueNalu CEO Lou Cooperhouse put the stakes plainly in February: "Regulatory approval without scalability gets you nowhere… And scalability without a product that delivers gets you nowhere."

Nabulsi, for his part, sees the same test coming. "Rhetoric isn't enough in the second wave of cultivated meat," he told FoodIngredientsFirst. "This time, we have to show the public real results."