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12 FoodTech news to know this week (2025 – week #22)

Published on May 26, 2025

Startup Funding News

🇬🇧 🧃 Final Boss, a UK-based functional beverage startup, raised $4M to expand its gaming-inspired sour soda brand. Gaming-focused brands may seem like niche products, but if you consider the size of the gaming industry and the number of somewhat “not-n-casual” gamers, it’s actually a huge market. For now, large brands have only tapped into it by partnering with games like Fortnite or Minecraft. Creating brands and products with marketing directly appealing to gamers or nostalgic gamers could be a huge opportunity.

 

🇮🇳 🍦 Hocco, an Indian ice cream brand, raised $10M Series B to scale its D2C and retail footprint across India. As for other snacks and desserts, India’s market is full of opportunities for innovators.

 

🇩🇪 🥬 Freshflow, a German startup, raised €6.5M to reduce waste and improve forecasting for fresh food supply chains.

 

🇦🇺 🍽️ EatClub, an Australian hospitality tech platform, raised AUD $18.2M to expand its dynamic pricing and reservation tools internationally.

 

🇨🇦 💧 Verdi, a Canadian AgTech startup, raised $4.7M to develop AI-controlled irrigation and crop input tools.

 

🇬🇧 🐶 Butternut Box, a British pet food startup, secured over €75M in debt to fuel growth across Europe and move toward unicorn status (the brand was acquired last year by a private equity fund).

 

🇫🇷 🥩 Umiami, a French startup focusing on whole-cut plant-based foods, saw its founder step down amid financial troubles, restructuring, and delayed scale-up. This is, once again, confirming how hard times can be for plant-based meat companies right now. Whole cuts, which are still seen as a solution to offer better texture and taste experiences to consumers, are taking much more time than anticipated to reach the market.

 

Leading Companies & Macro Trends

 

🇺🇸 🥣 Chobani, the American yoghurt giant, acquired Daily Harvest, a former unicorn known for its flash-frozen meals. Daily Harvest suffered from a 2022 product recall crisis, which tarnished its brand.

 

🇺🇸🥤PepsiCo is revising its climate goals by pushing its net-zero goal from 2040 to 2050. As we discussed in this recent insight, this is something that many food companies are doing, notably in the US.

 

🇨🇭 🧪 Nestlé, the Swiss food giant, opened a new deep tech hub focused on AI, biotech, and food personalisation in Lausanne.

 

🇪🇺 🌾 A joint ECB–Oxford study found that up to 30% of agricultural output in Southern Europe is at risk from water shortages, versus just 12% in Finland.

 

🇬🇧 🧠 GLP-1 drugs are shifting the global food landscape, with consumers cutting volume, calories, and impulse snacks.

 

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