Today, let’s have a look at the health of the broader “future of food” ecosystem, starting with investments in the FoodTech ecosystem. We have some early data points that show that investments have increased by 20% compared with the same period last year: $7.3B have been invested in FoodTech startups in H1 2024 compared to $6.9B in H1 2023.
This increase has been driven by a handful of mega deals, notably:
- $700M invested in Wonder, a cloud kitchens / virtual restaurants
- $665M for Zepto, an Indian, quick delivery grocery delivery startup
- $384M for Picnic, a Dutch grocery delivery startup
- $300M equity investment by Uber in Delivery Hero
First, this shows that large deals are back. They were almost absent of last year’s deals. It also demonstrates a return to the basics such as grocery and restaurant delivery in terms of topics.
Alongside this appetite for virtual restaurants and delivery, we observed an increase in AgTech deals with Bioinputs and AgBiotech still doing well. However, many other categories see a strong decline in funding, notably alternative proteins with no bounce back in sight.
In terms of geographies, if we compare the last quarter to what happened in H1 2023, we observe no major evolution beyond a “re-strengthening” of the North American ecosystem.
Europe declines slowly in terms of its relative share of global FoodTech funding. Indeed, if we look at the past year, investments are flat at around €1B per quarter.
Beyond investments in startups, we consider more and more relevant to have an overview at companies beyond the startup stage, notably if we want to focus on how innovation can have an impact and create the conditions for the “future of food”.
That’s why we have created DigitalFoodLab’s FoodTech index which looks at how publicly traded startups (which underwent an IPO) are doing. As you can see in this chart, these companies combined have done quite well over the first half of the year. They rose by about 24% in value while the overall market (in orange) rose only by 17%. This index even beat the tech-centric Nasdaq index (in blue).
Finally, we can compare the charts and data above to what large agrifood companies have been doing. Over the past six months, the index following agriculture and food companies which have declined by more than 4%. So, in a nutshell, an increase in funding of about 20% and 24% for publicly traded startups is quite good!
