Request for proposals: Alternative Protein R&D

Request for proposals: Alternative Protein R&D is sponsored by Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy) - Farm Animal Welfare Fund. Supports foundational, pre-competitive research to close the taste and price gap between alternative proteins and the animal products they replace.

Coefficient Giving Opens $10M Funding Call for Alternative Protein Taste Research - Cultivated X Image: chuttersnap on Unsplash San Francisco-based philanthropic funder Coefficient Giving has launched a Request for Proposals (RFP) through its Farm Animal Welfare Fund, offering up to $10 million for research and development projects targeting the sensory shortcomings of alternative proteins.

Applications are open until August 10, 2026, with awards to be announced on a rolling basis and no later than November 30.

“Factory farming is one of the largest sources of animal suffering” The fund has identified taste as the central barrier to mainstream adoption of plant-based and fermentation-derived products, arguing that a decade of investment has produced commercially relevant products without closing the gap with animal-derived equivalents in sensory terms.

The RFP targets four specific problem areas: reducing off-flavors in plant-based and fermentation-derived ingredients ; developing substitutes for animal fat in flavor generation; reducing or replacing eggs across a range of applications; and mapping fish flavors to enable future replication. Coefficient Giving has also published a detailed technical document outlining metrics and evaluation criteria for each priority.

Abhi Kumar, associate program officer on Coefficient’s Farm Animal Welfare team and lead on the RFP, stated, “Factory farming is one of the largest sources of animal suffering, and alternative proteins are among our most promising tools for displacing it — but adoption keeps stalling because today’s products still don’t taste like the meat, eggs, and fish they replace.

We believe this is a problem we can make progress on, and we’re eager to fund teams across the areas where progress looks most tractable. ” Image: Project of Food on Pexels Applications are open to academic researchers, industry scientists, engineers, and technologists from any sector. The fund may allocate beyond the $10 million ceiling depending on proposal quality.

Coefficient Giving, formerly known as Open Philanthropy, is a San Francisco-based philanthropic research and grantmaking organization. It rebranded in November 2025 to reflect its expanded role advising multiple donors beyond its founding partnership with Good Ventures .

According to the organization, it has directed more than $5 billion in grants across more than a dozen cause areas since 2014, including global health, AI safety, and farm animal welfare. Its alternative protein work dates to 2016, with several million dollars allocated toward developing cheaper and better substitutes for animal-derived products over that period.

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