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.

Biotech's new normal: Innovation but no VC money, risk

If there’s a new normal in biotech — and some would argue that we’re still trying to find that base — it involves fewer people, a lot less cash, less risk taking and labs full of enthusiasm.
A few events this week in the Bay Area are pretty illustrative: the BIO Investor Forum, Peter Thiel’s new fund for off-the-grid researchers and Thursday’s QB3-Deloitte Award for Innovation.

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.