💸 Funding News
🍄🇳🇱 The Protein Brewery, a Dutch startup, raised €18M in an extension of its Series B to scale production of its mycelium ingredient, following EU Novel Food authorisation. Total funding now exceeds €70M.
🐕🇬🇧 Omni, a British startup, raised £11M for its vegan pet food range for dogs and to launch a weight-loss supplement for dogs.
🦠🇬🇧 Myota, a British startup, raised $4.5M for its prebiotic fibre blends for gut health. It is positioning its products as a GLP-1 companion for metabolic health.
🍪🇺🇸 Maxine’s Heavenly, a US startup, raised $2.86M for its creme sandwich cookies.
🌵🇸🇦 Terraxy, a Saudi startup, raised $3M for its soil enhancer for arid and sandy environments that improves water and nutrient retention and can increase plant yields by up to 70%.
🤖🇹🇳 RoboCare, a Tunisian startup, raised a six-figure round for its precision agriculture platform to help farmers with early disease detection and resource optimisation.
💧🇸🇪 Wayout International, a Swedish startup, raised €2.42M for its decentralised drinking water infrastructure platform, which purifies water locally through advanced filtration, mineralisation, smart dispensing, and digital monitoring.
⭐ Acquisitions, Regulation, Bankruptcies & Partnerships
🍽️🇸🇦🇬🇷 Foodics, a Saudi restaurant SaaS platform, acquired Norma AI, a Greek data intelligence startup for the hospitality industry.
🥇 Leading Companies
🌿🇩🇪 Bayer won a US Supreme Court ruling blocking lawsuits over glyphosate (Roundup). The decision could shield Bayer from thousands of pending cancer-related suits. It sent its shares up 16%.
🥛🇫🇷🇦🇺 Danone announced the acquisition of Made Group, an Australian health-focused food and beverage company with annual sales exceeding €300M, to strengthen its APAC footprint.
🍺🇯🇵 Kirin’s president said that beer can provide “spiritual or mental” health benefits, pushing back against the WHO’s stance that no amount of alcohol is safe. This underscores Kirin’s bet-the-company pivot: as Japanese alcohol consumption declines, it is repositioning itself as a health science company through acquisitions and leveraging its expertise in fermentation expertise for supplements and probiotics.
📊 Macro Trends
🧠🇺🇸 Big Food is shifting from scale to intelligence: consolidation and cost-cutting alone no longer generate growth for large food manufacturers. As private labels gain traction, Gen Z’s low loyalty levels, and GLP-1 pressures, the next competitive edge will come from AI, data analytics, consumer insight, and rapid innovation.
🛵🇮🇳 India’s quick-commerce race is accelerating: Flipkart has reached 1,000 dark stores across 130 cities, with 5x year-on-year order growth and Gen Z accounting for 40% of its user base. Amazon Now is expanding from 100 to 300 cities.
🥤🇺🇸 McDonald’s is diversifying its beverages beyond Coca-Cola after 70 years of near-exclusive partnership. It has launched refreshers, crafted sodas, and is testing Red Bull-based drinks to target younger consumers and follow the speciality drinks trend.
