Startup news and deals
🇺🇸🍄Meati, a US-based startup, raised $100M (the largest round in alternative proteins since 2022) to sustain its growth in retail. Meati uses biomass fermentation to produce meat alternatives that are now distributed in thousands of stores in the US.
🇺🇸🍫 Voyage Foods, a US-based startup, raised $52M for its plant-based, allergen-free and climate-friendly (its milk chocolate alternative produces 84% less emissions than the “real thing”) ingredients for snacks. It creates alternatives to chocolate, peanut butter, etc., through its own brand but also for B2B applications. With $94 raised in total, it leads the ever-growing category of startups applying alternative protein technologies to plants.
🇺🇸🌱 ArkeaBio, a U.S.-based startup, raised $26.5M for its methane-reducing livestock vaccine. This opens a new area of exploration for methane reduction beyond supplements.
🇬🇧🧠 Hexis, a British startup, raised £1,6M for its service for athletes that translates the data gathered from wearables into personalised nutrition advice.
🇮🇱🥩 Profuse, an Israeli startup, received €2.4M in grants for the development of a supplement to be used in culture medium for cellular agriculture, which speeds the growth of cultivated meat.
🇩🇪 🌿 Insempra, a German startup, raised €20M for its technology that turns oil yeast into lipids through fermentation. These lipids target applications in cosmetics and food, notably in antioxydants, preservatives, and flavours.
🇫🇷 💳 An older news that we missed from last month: Anycommerce, a French PoS solution provider, formerly known as Wynd, was acquired from ChapsVision for a rumoured €12.5M. That’s quite a low figure for a startup that raised above €100M and was once seen as among the most promising French startups. It may be one of the most interesting and less documented stories of startup deception and over-valuation in the European ecosystem.
Industry news & trends
🇺🇸 💊 Interesting read about the opportunities created by Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs in terms of food innovation. As we said in last week’s newsletter, this has the potential to disrupt many categories, and it definitely should be at the top of your watchlist.
🇸🇪 🥛 Oatly has cut losses in Q1 2024, while sales (slightly) improved.
🇺🇸 🍔 Beyond Meat announced its 8th consecutive quarter of sales decline. However, losses were also reduced, and it hopes that 2024 will be “pivotal” (let’s hope it will be, otherwise, the future looks bleak as the company has accumulated a large $1B+ debt).
🇺🇸 🚚 Publicly traded delivery startups had a good quarter:
