🇩🇪 🍄 Infinite Roots, a German startup, raised $58M for its mycelium fermentation platform. Compared to other players in the space, the startup doesn’t plan to operate its own factories. instead, it works with contract manufacturers.
🇬🇧🍲 Freja, a British startup, raised £2M for its bone broth brand. The success of this brand, and beyond, of bone broth used for nutrition rather than enhancing recipes, shows the unwavering appetite of consumers for healthy and better-for-you products.
🇺🇸 🌱 Neatleaf, an American startup, raised $4M for its cultivation solutions for agriculture that combine AI, data, and robotics.
🇺🇸 🏪 Walmart closed its internal incubator Store N°8. Created 7 years ago as a separate business unit, it was intended as a place to experiment with new ideas, not immediately profitable. This type of innovation hub has gone out of fashion in recent years, as it didn’t often deliver tangible value for corporations.
🇳🇱🐛 Protix, a Dutch startup, received a €37M loan from the European Investment Bank to expand its insect production. With this funding, it will build a new facility in Poland. Protix seems to be the (current) clear leader in the field of insect proteins, with the only operational facility in Europe among the three giants (which all received hundreds of millions), and plans to open facilities in the US and now in Eastern Europe.
🇮🇱🤖 Bluewhite, an Israeli startup, raised €39M for its robotics technology that enables the retrofit of existing tractors into autonomous robots. That’s quite smart, as it reduces the upfront cost for farmers and significantly reduces the risk associated with hardware production (for the startup) while creating a SaaS-like business model for the startup.
🇺🇸 🍔 Aniai, an American startup, raised €12M for its burger-cooking robots.
🇫🇷 📺 Carrefour and Netflix are testing a combined subscription, which will give access to “Carrefour Plus” (granting a 10% discount on the retailer’s private label products) and Netflix.
🇺🇸🍈 Elo Life Systems, an American startup, raised $20.5M to grow the adoption of monk fruit as a natural sweetener.
🇬🇧🌱 IGS, a British startup, raised $28.5M for its vertical farm technology. With the funds, it will open a large farm in the United Arab Emirates. The country is becoming a new hub for vertical farming, as many startups are opening or planning to open facilities there.
🇩🇰 ☕ Kaffe Bueno, a Danish startup, raised €6.2M to scale its production of products based on upcycled coffee grounds. into high-value products for global niche markets.
🇰🇪🌾 Shamba Pride, a Kenyan startup, raised $3.7M for its agriculture platform, which provides data-driven insights and innovative solutions to farmers.
