Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs funds artificial meat, cell-tracking companies in latest round

Peter Thiel.

A startup using tissue engineering to develop an edible cured meat, and another company whose technology could more easily track stem cells as they make their way through the body, won grants from a foundation started by entrepreneur Peter Thiel. The grants to the two Peninsula companies and a company from Huntsville, Ala., whose nano technology could help diagnose diseases from a single sample, compose the second round of funding from the San Francisco-based Thiel Foundation’s Breakout Labs. The awards of up to $350,000 each are aimed at helping startups get to a proof of concept that enables them to woo venture capital and other sources of capital.

Peter Thiel-backed program boosts 'breakout' companies

Tanya Jones wanted to find a way to improve the odds for transplant patients, and knew the cooling methods she was developing to help preserve organs had to move out of a friend’s barn in Phoenix.
“You can imagine doing organ work in a stable – it’s a dusty environment,” said Jones, co-founder and CEO of Arigos Biomedical. “So now we’ve upgraded to a garage.”
Soon, Arigos will move into lab space in Mountain View, boosted by funding from a new program called Breakout Labs. There, the startup plans to move its technology beyond the idea stage and prove it works. That way, transplant recipients will have the time to get an organ from across the world, if necessary, and an organ that’s not a perfect match for a transplant can be saved for someone who will need it later.
Arigos is one of six companies in the initial class from Breakout Labs, a new initiative through the San Francisco-based Thiel Foundation. The initiative, backed by Paypal founder and investor Peter Thiel, aims to give small amounts of funding to very early stage science startups. The premise is that just a little bit of money can help get these early startups to their first milestones, aided by the prestige of a high-profile investor. The hope is this will help the company raise more money in the future.

Peter Thiel's Breakout Labs funds first 6 startups, including 3 in Bay Area

Breakout Labs, a new program from the Thiel Foundation that aims to fund very early-stage science startups, announced its first six grantees Tuesday.
The companies, which are from across the country, range from one that’s trying to develop 3-D digital reconstruction of brain tissue to another that’s developing handheld devices to monitor the air for pathogens, toxins and allergens.
The companies receive only small amounts of funding — up to $350,000. Breakout Labs leaders say it’s enough to get the companies to their first milestones and begin to prove their concepts work.
(Read more about Breakout Labs here.)

Peter Thiel launches Breakout Labs for startups with 'audacious ideas'

Startup guru Peter Thiel is spreading the love, announcing Tuesday that his foundation will offer $50,000 to $350,000 grants to help science and technology entrepreneurs blocked from traditional fund-raising paths.
Thiel, a co-founder of PayPal and early Facebook investor, unveiled the concept — called Breakout Labs — at a speech Tuesday to the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students. The fund will have a website where advanced technology entrepreneurs can apply.
Ten or 20 high-tech, biotech, nanotech or other types of "convergence" projects could be funded next year, said Lindy Fishburne, executive director of Breakout Labs. In return, the Thiel Foundation will take a “modest” royalty on the startups’ products and a “small percentage” in warrants, Fishburne said, to fund fresh rounds of grants.