Political Science Alumnus develops world’s first cultivated salmon

Photo courtesy of Wildtype

February 3, 2026

By Jessica Park

Driven by a mission to address global food insecurity while protecting vulnerable ecosystems, UC Berkeley Political Science alum Justin Kolbeck co-founded Wildtype, the world’s first cultivated salmon. Instead of fishing or farming salmon, the company grows real salmon meat from fish cells.

Wildtype tackles key problems in the global food system, including overfished oceans, the limits of fish farming — which requires large amounts of feed, water and space — and the risk of contamination in seafood supply chains. By growing salmon cells in clean, controlled facilities, Kolbeck and his team aim to preserve salmon’s nutritional value, while reducing exposure to mercury and other toxins commonly found in wild-caught or farmed salmon.

After more than a decade of scientific research and regulatory review, Wildtype reached a major milestone in May 2025, when its cultivated salmon became the first cell-grown seafood available to consumers anywhere in the world following the completion of a pre-market consultation process with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Today, Wildtype salmon is available at several restaurants, including in San Francisco, and Kolbeck and his team plan to expand access and bring the product to grocery stores in the future.

Kolbeck spoke to Berkeley Social Sciences recently about creating Wildtype, its FDA approval and advice for Berkeley students interested in entrepreneurship.

How did your time at Berkeley influence your thinking about innovation, sustainability and entrepreneurship?

Justin Kolbeck: When you go to a place like Berkeley, your mind is expanded by orders of magnitude. The depth that the school has across so many different disciplines is astounding. I grew up in the Los Angeles area, and when you go to the Bay Area, you can't help but feel like it’s an innovation generation machine. As a Political Science major, I was very interested in global issues like food insecurity and being-mission driven. The big question I had was, how are we going to feed the next three billion people on the planet who all want to eat as much meat and seafood as we do without completely trashing the planet? That’s what ultimately led to the creation of Wildtype.

What problem were you trying to solve when you first decided to start Wildtype?

Justin Kolbeck: You can get seafood by catching it in the ocean, but these days, you cannot catch Atlantic salmon in the wild because they're endangered. Every piece of Atlantic salmon you eat today is from a farm. On the farming side, there are profound limitations on the amount of fish farms that can be put out there, and it has not kept up with global demand for salmon. Even for fish farming, a full third of all of the feed that's used for fish farms comes from wild caught anchovies and sardines, so it puts us back to the same problem of taking all of the fish out of the sea and profoundly disrupting the ecosystem. With Wildtype, it’s a third way to eat salmon, without parasites and mercury, along with preserving the ecosystem.

Wildtype's cultivated salmon recently became the first cell-grown seafood approved by the FDA. What did that moment mean to you?

Justin Kolbeck: It was massive, because we’ve been working on this technology and working very patiently with the Food and Drug Administration for several years to make sure that the product was as safe as possible. Completing that process and being able to present this product in a restaurant for the first time, where people could buy it, was amazing. The most special moment was actually taking my family to go buy it for the first time a few weeks later.

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced while starting Wildtype?

Justin Kolbeck: First, it was explaining a really crazy idea. People understood plant-based foods, but salmon is typically farm-raised or wild caught. We had to explain that we grow the cells outside of the animal and combine them with plant-based ingredients to create cultivated salmon. Convincing investors and team members that this could be a real company was challenging, especially since we needed a decent amount of capital to support this idea. In addition, growing fish cells at a large amount to feed enough people, while also driving down costs to make our product accessible has been a major challenge. We still have a million challenges, but that's also what makes it fun.

What advice would you give Berkeley students interested in entrepreneurship?

Justin Kolbeck: I don't know exactly how many Nobel laureates teach at Berkeley, but it's a large amount that you’re constantly exposed to new ways of thinking. When I was a student, I lived in the Putnam dorms in Unit 1, and people on my floor were doing such tremendously different things.

Even though I was a social sciences student and didn’t have the technical depth in biology, I met my co-founder at a dinner after I graduated from Berkeley — and because of that, Wildtype exists today. That story can easily happen at a place like Berkeley. My advice is to get outside your major and your comfort zone. Talk to people who are doing really different things. Merging very different but complementary skill sets creates a very strong foundation for a good business. It also creates some tension, but I think that's healthy.

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