Forget lab-grown meat, a US company backed by Mark Zuckerberg and Li Ka-Shing, Hong Kong's richest man, is developing lab-grown cow skin in a bid to disrupt the $US100 billion ($A140.5) global leather industry.

Andras Forgacs, founder and chief executive of Modern Meadow, a US-based company, said the new technology would allow real leather to be produced at scale in a factory without having to raise or slaughter livestock.

Instead, the vegan-friendly leather will be made using a bioengineered form of yeast that will be brewed to produce bovine collagen, a protein found in the connective tissues of cows, the basic biological building block of leather.

"The opportunity is vast because the world of materials is vast," he told The Sunday Telegraph in Helsinki. "Cows don't come in the shape of a sofa or a handbag... So we can create a lot of efficiencies."