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The cost consequences follow directly from that ceiling. Humbird’s fed-batch process model, built around bioreactors at or below the 20-cubic-meter limit, converges on roughly thirty-seven dollars per kilogram of wet cell mass at the largest realistic production scale he models; a perfusion-based alternative converges on roughly fifty-one dollars per kilogram. At the very largest theoretical volumes he considers, and only by essentially eliminating growth-medium cost — a change he treats as necessary but explicitly insufficient on its own — the model’s absolute floor comes down to approximately sixteen dollars per kilogram. Growth medium, chiefly the amino acids that feed the cells, is the…

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