Startup Funding News
🇺🇸 🍽️ Owner.com, an American restaurant tech platform, hit a $1B valuation after raising $120M to keep growing its all-in-one operating system for independent restaurants. Foodservice digitisation is one of the very few categories of the FoodTech ecosystem which is continuously doing well. However, while it was initially doing well both in Europe and North America, it is now mostly led by US startups only (most European players have been bought by legacy players or have simply disappeared). It shows that in food, as in other areas, digital services require a large pool of consumers to create viable business models, something that is not achievable in Europe due to big national differences (notably in restaurants).
🇳🇿 🐄 Bovotica, a New Zealand startup, raised $3.4M to develop its methane-reducing solutions for livestock.
🇮🇳 🍔 High Time Foods, an Indian startup, raised $1.2M to develop shelf-stable, plant-based meat powders that rehydrate into full meals.
🇮🇳 🥜 Farmley, an Indian healthy snacking brand, raised $42M to expand its clean-label dried fruit and nut products across India and abroad. Week after week, we hear about India-based snack and better-for-you food companies raising quite significant rounds. That’s definitely a space to look at!
🇬🇧 🌿 Gardin, a British startup, raised $4.5M for its photosynthesis sensor and AI platform for precision agriculture.
🇸🇪 🌲 Lignin Industries, a Swedish biomaterials startup, raised €3.9M to scale its tree-derived plastic alternatives.
Acquisitions, Partnerships & Strategic Moves
🇫🇷 🇺🇸 Danone, the French dairy giant, acquired a majority stake in Kate Farms, an American medical nutrition brand specialised in tube feeding, reinforcing its footprint in food-as-medicine. This example shows that startups can create meaningful innovation (and create value) in medical nutrition, a space that is often overlooked.
🇪🇸 🧀 Heura Foods, a Spanish plant-based startup, received €20M in loans from the European Investment Bank to develop its range of products beyond plant-based meat.
Leading Companies & Macro Trends
🇫🇷 🍷 M-Wine, a French startup, showed that its AI system could match and even beat expert sommeliers in blind tastings. The technology is intended to help with the authentication of wines.
🇺🇸 🧬 The FDA approved CRISPR-edited pigs for human consumption in the US, marking a first for gene-edited livestock. The pigs were engineered to have better resistance to respiratory disease.
🇨🇭 🧪 Nestlé opened a deep tech R&D centre in Lausanne, Switzerland, focused on AI and biotech-driven nutrition solutions.
🌍 🥛 Cow milk sales are rising again in the US. It is interesting to see how the industry has adapted and is now getting much better at communicating to the consumer than plant-based alternatives.
