Leonardo DiCaprio invests in two lab-grown meat startups

Leonoard DiCaprio backs 2 companies that develop protein products grown from cow cells, a growing trend in the alternative meat market.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance Live. In today's "Hot Takes," a topic, Zack, that got a lot of us debating early this morning in our morning meeting-- after Leonardo DiCaprio investing in cultivated meat startups, we're talking about Mosa Meat and Aleph Farms-- I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. He's also going to be joining the advisory boards of both companies.

And of course, Leonardo DiCaprio has long, long been a very, very active or vocal climate activist, we should say. This is part of, you know, that thesis that he's been pushing for-- lowering or reducing the carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions. And I know, Zack, I think people hear cultivated meat, lab-grown meat-- it doesn't sound very appealing. I don't know if that's more appealing than plant-based meat.

But the reality is, this is kind of where the market is going just given the footprint that we've seen. Dairy and meat combined accounting for about 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, at least according to numbers out from the UN, and some would argue that's just not sustainable anymore.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. You know, you cover our kind of climate front here for us at Yahoo Finance Live. If there was a meat reporter here, Akiko, I guess it'd have to be me, because, you know, big meat fan, you know? And we talked about this in the morning meeting-- just very different. You can talk about plant-based, lab-grown meat-- obviously not the same.

I mean, it might appeal-- it all comes down to taste, so it might appeal more so to maybe you conscious carnivores out there. But I still think there will probably be, regardless of price and pricing pressures there as that comes down, or that's the belief that it'll come down, there will still be people who just prefer the old-fashioned, real deal, came from a cow meat-- or came from whatever animal meat. And I think that might just be something that shakes out over time relative to price and comfortability.

But I mean, speaking of DiCaprio here, we've seen him invest in a few of these lab-grown companies before even on the diamond side-- came out really against the idea of mining diamonds in Africa, invested in a few companies, Diamond Foundry being the big one that he's invested in. So the idea of lab-grown anything not foreign to DiCaprio-- interesting to see him, though, double down in the meat space.

AKIKO FUJITA: Maybe they can change the branding a little-- lab-grown anything just doesn't sound appealing. And full disclosure, I do eat meat. So I'm not anti-meat. It's just when you look at the numbers, it's just not sustainable. And here's a number to throw out here-- global meat consumption expected to grow 40% to 70% by 2050.

The cultivated meat market, and this is according to numbers provided by these companies, expected to reach $25 billion by 2030. And we were just showing some other companies on our screen that are in this space. We're not just talking about meat, there's a company called Finless Foods that is doing cell-grown seafood, lab-grown seafood. So I mean, there's a lot of innovation happening in this space and all of that is dictated by the market and where things are moving as a result of climate change.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. I'm not sure which one sounds great there, Akiko-- plant-based seafood, lab-grown-- [INAUDIBLE] we're talking about here, but I do think they need to figure out a different term here. And conscious carnivores is a real term-- getting laughed at by our producers here, but, you know, people care about where your meat comes from-- factory farming and the shift away from that.

I think there is a broadening out of the space. But regardless of your stance, I mean, good to have people thinking more about this issue as we see kind of investors like DiCaprio putting capital to work.