Upside Foods Stock: Will the Company Cultivate an IPO Next Year?

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Upside Foods Stock IPO News

02/19/2024: Upside Foods shelves plans for new US factory
12/14/2023: Upside Foods Struggles With Lab-Grown Chicken 
10/28/2023: Cell-cultured meat is far from dead
Older news…

What is Upside Foods?

Upside Foods makes cultivated meat, a product it says is better for the planet. Cultivated meat, also known as lab-grown meat, uses animal cells to grow the tastiest parts without breeding and slaughtering millions of animals. 

Rather than raising whole chickens, pigs, or cows, we grow only the meat we want to eat—directly from real animal cells. At scale, it will be a more humane and future-friendly way to grow high-quality food for meat lovers everywhere.

Founded as Memphis Meats in 2015, the company changed its name to Upside Foods in 2021. Upside Foods is headquartered in Berkeley, California.

CEO & Founder Uma Valeti, M.D., trained as a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic. He realized some of the technology his team used to help heart attack patients could work to grow animal meat in labs.

Considering the potential positive impact on the planet, he left his medical career to start what became Upside. 

Upside Foods opened its first production plant in November 2021 called the EPIC (Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center).

As of June 2023, the company has FDA and USDA approval to sell its product in the U.S. 

Here’s a video tour of the EPIC facility in Emeryville, California.

Is Upside Foods Publicly Traded?

No. Upside Foods is a private company. You cannot buy or sell Upside Foods stock on a stock exchange. 

Who Owns Upside Foods?

Upside Foods is a venture-backed private company. Its investors include founders, employees, high-profile individuals, and multiple venture capital firms.

The company has raised more than $600 million since its founding. The latest round was a Series C in April 2022 that raised $400 million to help them “drive product innovation, partnerships, and the infrastructure needed to make cultivated meat at scale.”

Prominent venture capital investors include Tyson’s Foods, Baillie Gifford, Softbank, Norwest, Temasek, Threshold Ventures, Cargill, Finistere, Future Ventures, Kimbal Musk, Fifty Years, CPT Capital, Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Whole Foods, John Mackey, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and John Doerr.

Upside Foods Valuation

The current Upside Foods valuation is $1 billion based on the Series C round completed in April 2022.

When is the Upside Foods IPO Date?

The Upside Foods IPO date is unknown. 

The company has yet to prove its viability. Therefore, we should not expect an IPO in the next 24 months. 

Despite a significant April 2022 funding round, Upside Foods is still in the process of scaling up the production of its products.

FDA approval of its first product suggests a path forward, but a profitable business model may be several years away. 

Startups tend to wait until the business is further along before going public. However, favorable IPO market conditions, such as those in 2020 and 2021, could entice the company to go public before being sufficiently scaled. 

Considering its investors, Upside Foods should not have trouble distributing its product. But consumer taste is a big question mark. 

We won’t get a better sense of when the Upside Foods IPO will be until we learn about new funding rounds, the hiring of an underwriter, an S-1 filing (public or confidential), or an IPO date range that reaches the press. 

What is the Upside Foods Stock Symbol? Upside Foods Ticker?

Upside Foods is still a private company, so there is no Upside Foods stock symbol yet. 

Here are a few Upside Foods ticker suggestions that appear to be available in the U.S.: 

• UF
• USF
• FOOD
• MEAT 

What is the Upside Foods Stock Price?

There is no public Upside Foods stock price yet. The company is private. 

Private stock price information is becoming more available and reliable based on pre-IPO marketplace data and other sources. 

However, the stock price is only the value of one share. Like public companies, the underlying valuation metrics, revenue, profitability, and market sentiment toward private companies are more significant factors than the share price.

Can You Buy Upside Foods on Pre-IPO Marketplaces?

The author has not seen evidence of Upside Foods stock direct ownership opportunities on prominent pre-IPO investing platforms such as Equitybee, EquityZen, Forge Global, or Linqto. 

If the company becomes available, only accredited investors will be able to invest. 

The SEC requires pre-IPO investors to be accredited, meaning a net worth above $1 million (not including primary residence) or an income above $200,000 (or $300,000 with a spouse).

Accredited investors should expect to pay at least $10,000 for a minimum stake upon future availability.

Non-accredited investors can sidestep the accreditation requirement by investing in a venture capital fund such as the Fundrise Innovation Fund.

Upside Foods is not a holding in the fund at this time. 

Check out our list of top pre-IPO investing platforms for current share availability. 

Please note: This is a testimonial in partnership with Fundrise. We earn a commission from partner links on AccessIPOs.com. All opinions are my own.

How to Invest in Upside Foods Stock

Since Upside Foods is not a public company, it is challenging to become an equity owner today. The chances of ownership opportunities may increase if there is a new round of venture-backed funding. 

Retail IPO can take action today to improve your chances of early equity ownership or acquire shares in the eventual IPO. 

You’ll need to be patient.

1. Buy Upside Foods on Pre-IPO investing platforms

The author has not yet seen evidence of Upside Foods being available on pre-IPO platforms.

However, investors can monitor pre-IPO investing platforms for future availability. 

If shares become available, expect to pay at least a $10,000 investment minimum. It’s free to sign up for access and alerts. 

Two venture capital funds stood up in 2022 to allow non-accredited retail investors to invest in pre-IPO companies. They are: 

The Fundrise Innovation Fund

The ARK Venture Fund

Neither fund holds Upside Foods at this time. But investors can own these funds today to participate in pre-IPO gains leading up to the next round of public IPOs. 

2. Buy during the Upside Foods stock IPO through a participating broker

Retail IPO investors may find opportunities to invest during the IPO. That means acquiring shares at the IPO price the night before the company begins trading.

Once reserved for Wall Street’s wealthiest customers, IPO access has become more attainable to retail investors in the past five years. 

Online brokers such as the following give customers free access to IPOs, even with low account balances.

• TradeStation 
• Robinhood

Brokers often negotiate exclusive IPO share allocations to retail investors. Your access to specific high-demand IPOs may be limited by how many brokerage accounts you have and what broker gets exclusive access. 

TradeStation has a longer track record of accessing more than 300 IPOs and secondary offerings via its partnership with ClickIPO. 

Robinhood has the advantage of Silicon Valley networks and a history of getting allocations for high-profile IPOs.

Check out this list of best brokers for IPO investing to learn more about IPO access for retail investors.

3. Buy Upside Foods after the IPO

Though waiting for the IPO requires patience, there are advantages to waiting for the stock to become publicly traded before owning. 

First of all, the IPO allows investors to review financials. Pre-IPO investing has limited financials available. 

Second, IPO stock prices typically rise with high-demand companies. You can benefit if you’re in early and sell when the price overheats.

Many IPOs start with an immediate price increase (“the pop”). Then the stock falls once quarterly earnings reports become available. 

The stock price declines after the IPOs could become excellent entry points if you were not allocated IPO shares. 

Avoid buying overvalued shares immediately after the IPO. Shares often fall after the IPO due to lockup expirations and quarterly earnings disappointments. 

However, the most disruptive companies will be higher in a decade. Patience pays. 

Where can I find the Upside Foods IPO S-1 Filing?

Upside Foods has not yet submitted an S-1 filing to the SEC. When the company does, we’ll link to it and embed it on this page. 

The company may or may not announce a confidential filing before the public release. 

Monitor the most recent S-1 filings in our S-1 filings feed. 

Upside Foods News Archive

06/21/2023: UPSIDE is approved for sale in the US
04/20/2023: UPSIDE Foods Announces What’s Next on the Menu
11/17/2022: Lab-Grown Chicken Gets a Green Light From the FDA
04/21/2022: Series C Funding Brings the UPSIDE of Meat One Step Closer
01/22/2020: Memphis Meats (Upside Foods) Raises $161 Million Series B
01/29/2018: Tyson Foods Invests in Memphis Meats

Conclusion

Investors get excited when they identify companies riding extraordinary macroeconomic trends (fake meat). This can lead us to private companies positioning to profit from massive opportunities. 

Buying the stock early on may prove difficult for retail investors. Upside Foods is still one significant funding round away from more widespread pre-IPO access because the $1 billion valuation is not tempting enough for early investors to cash out. 

Once production progresses and the product is for sale in stores and restaurants, an additional funding round could raise the valuation significantly. 

If the products are similar enough to animal-harvested meat, the market potential for Upside Foods stock is healthy. 

Retail investors pursuing early equity and IPO shares should maintain reasonable expectations. Investing in a company at this early stage will be difficult. But should become possible as the company scales. 

If Upside Foods stock is on your radar, good luck. Invest in pre-IPO and IPO companies with caution.