CFO Intelligence Magazine – Spring/Summer 2024
Kevin Benmoussa
Aleph Farms CFO
Many companies try to increase their market share by differentiating and improving their offering: think of how mobile device makers, software developers, and others periodically add new bells and whistles to their products. But the challenges are different when a company builds a totally new market then it’s not simply a matter of capturing consumers’ attention, but creating demand from the ground up.
Since 2018, that’s what Aleph Farms which has its financial headquarters in New York City and most of its 130 employees in Rehovot, Israel has been doing. The VC-funded company, which is also financially backed by sovereign wealth funds, and the governments of Singapore, the UAE, and Israel grow beef steaks from non-genetically engineered cells isolated from living cows.
In December 2018, the company unveiled a prototype of what it calls the “the world’s first cultivated steak;” and then in 2021 it produced “the world’s first cultivated ribeye steak.” A prototype of the next frontier, cultivated collagen, was released in March 2022. CFO Intelligence spoke with EVP & CFO Kevin Benmoussa about how Aleph Farms raises funds and manages its financial resources as it seeks to build a market for its products; and why the company decided to focus on beef instead of poultry.