Google’s Sergey Brin helped finance lab-grown burger

When Sergey Brin isn’t busy with Google Glass or making movie cameos, he also takes the time to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in lab-grown meat.

The billionaire Google co-founder was recently revealed as the person funding a project by Dutch scientists to create synthetic meat from muscle stem cells taken out of cows. Brin has backed the experiment with 250,000 euros, or $330,000, according to the Guardian.

A YouTube video explaining the project shows Brin saying that he is concerned with what will happen to the world as the population balloons in the coming decades and with it the demand for meat as well as the problems that can come with mass meat production.

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Brin said one solution is to create meat synthetically.

“It’s really just proof of concept right now, we’re trying to create the first cultured beef hamburger,” he said in the video. “From there I’m optimistic that we can really scale by leaps and bounds.”

A burger taste test was held in London for the lab-grown meat Monday, and although it’s not quite as good as real meat just yet according to the testers, it seems the project was positively received.

In the past year, Brin has been best known for his work leading Google’s smartglasses effort. Brin has been seen almost everywhere he goes sporting Google Glass, which could come out as early as next year.

In the meat video, Brin talks about his interest in technologies that are “on the cusp of viability.”

“Some people think it’s science fiction, it’s not real, it’s somewhere out there. I actually think that’s a good thing,” he said in the video, talking about the lab-grown meat. “If what you’re doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it’s probably not transformative enough.”

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