The billionaire betting his fortune on alternative proteins – and giving the profits away
29 Jun 2026
06:00
Jim Mellon made billions on everything from biotech drugs to uranium. Now he's placing bets on precision fermentation – and says his share of the profits will go to animals.
Impact Loop sat down with the British billionaire investor to discuss the future of foodtech, Agronomics, and why he's not too concerned about the firm's current share price discount.
"There's not much we can do about that but wait, be patient, and deliver some exits," Mellon tells Impact Loop.
Impact Loop sat down with the British billionaire investor to discuss the future of foodtech, Agronomics, and why he's not too concerned about the firm's current share price discount.
"There's not much we can do about that but wait, be patient, and deliver some exits," Mellon tells Impact Loop.
Jim Mellon has nine Ibizan hounds, a rescue shelter with 30 more dogs, and a habit of bringing animal welfare into pretty much any conversation. When we speak by video call, he wants to know whether I can guess how long an intensively-farmed chicken lives before slaughter. The answer, he says, is 26 days on average, a number he delivers with the ease of someone who has been making this argument for a while.
Mellon, 69, is the executive chairman of Agronomics, a London-listed investment company focused on cultivated food and precision fermentation. He co-founded it – along with a parallel private vehicle, New Agrarian – with money made across four decades of opportunistic bets: fund management in Hong K...