Arik Kaufman
Arik Kaufman · Israel & Modern Innovation
Co-founder (2019) and chief executive of Steakholder Foods, formerly MeaTech, the Israeli company that 3D-prints meat and fish alternatives, including the first ready-to-cook printed cultivated fish fillet (2023)
2019
Israel · Ness Ziona
Arik Kaufman is recognized among Israeli contributors to Israel & Modern Innovation — Co-founder (2019) and chief executive of Steakholder Foods, formerly MeaTech, the Israeli company that 3D-prints meat and fish alternatives, including the first ready-to-cook printed cultivated fish fillet (2023)
Origins and early life
Arik Kaufman grew up in Israel, where, he recalls, he ate plant-based food as a child; he graduated from Reichman University and worked for many years as a lawyer on mergers, acquisitions and licensing agreements.
Work and career
He later opened his own law practice, then spent seven or eight years as business development director at Clalit, which he describes as Israel's largest health maintenance organisation. Wanting to build something of his own, he asked an engineer, after tasting a plant-based burger in a restaurant, what a printer for steak would cost, and in 2019 he co-founded MeaTech to develop 3D-printed meat. The company listed on Nasdaq in March 2021, bioprinted a cultivated steak of 104 grams that year and, in August 2022, renamed itself Steakholder Foods.
In April 2023, with the Singapore company Umami Meats and a grant of one million dollars from the Singapore-Israel Industrial R&D Foundation, it printed what it called the first ready-to-cook fish fillet, made from cultivated grouper cells. Kaufman has also founded three other food-technology companies, two of them listed in Tel Aviv, and is a founding partner of the investment collective BlueSoundWaves. In September 2026 the company, based in Ness Ziona, launched its Perfecta line of plant-based steaks, chicken and fish in shops across the north-eastern United States.
No source states his Jewish identity in so many words: the Jerusalem Post placed him 41st in its 2023 list of the fifty most influential Jews, and an Israeli founder's biography has little reason to mention it. He is here under the Israeli presumption the site adopted on 7 September 2026 and extended on 15 October 2026 to Ashkenazi surnames — a Hebrew given name, a life in Israel and a strong attested tie, here the founding of the Israeli company Steakholder Foods — which is a presumption and not a declaration, and which any contrary source overturns.
Verify and go deeper with these external references.
Source: Wikipedia — Steakholder Foods; Times of Israel 2023; Steakholder Foods; Jerusalem Post 50 Most Influential Jews 2023 (Israeli presumption, CLAUDE.md 3bis-b)
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Co-founder (2019) and chief executive of Steakholder Foods, formerly MeaTech, the Israeli company that 3D-prints meat and fish alternatives, including the first ready-to-cook printed cultivated fish fillet (2023)
Source: Wikipedia — Steakholder Foods; Times of Israel 2023; Steakholder Foods; Jerusalem Post 50 Most Influential Jews 2023 (Israeli presumption, CLAUDE.md 3bis-b)
