An Oasis of Innovation

A half dozen pearling boats rest on the barren and desolate shoreline as two people wait on the beach, hoping for oysters to create a metropolis.

The stark scene of Doha’s undeveloped shoreline from a photograph in the early years of the 1900s is striking. Since the early 20th century, the once-sleepy Qatari peninsula, 4,471-square miles of desert jutting into the Persian Gulf, has awoken and transformed into one of the world’s wealthiest enclaves and an international leader in innovation. It is an oasis of reinvention in the vast 1 million square miles of the Arabian desert.

Doha in Qatar, 1908

It is not the Qatari capital city the world pairs now with towering skyscrapers and the world’s third-highest global domestic production per capita. Or the first city in the Middle East to host the World Cup. Or now, together with GOOD Meat, the first location in the Middle East to build a cultivated meat facility.

Doha in Qatar, 2016

GOOD Meat is the first and only company in the world to sell cultivated meat. Our first product is GOOD Meat cultivated chicken, which Singapore has already approved for sale, and is currently available at select restaurants. Qatar is poised to become another early entrant in the fast-growing cultivated meat sector.

With a significant investment in our more sustainable approach to meat production, Doha Venture Capital (DVC) and the Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) have taken yet another step to define the region’s future. We’re proud to partner with them.

None of this, of course, should be surprising. After all, Doha in Arabic means “sunrise.”

The sun is yet again rising on Doha’s shores as we work together to build a planet we can all be proud of.