Startup news and deals
🧬 🇬🇧 Basecamp Research, a British startup, raised $60M for its protein discovery platform. It gathers information worldwide and builds a large dataset that can be explored for biotech, pharma and agriculture applications.
🌾 🇮🇹 xFarm Technologies, a leading Italian startup, raised €36M for its digital platform, which supports farmers in all their operations, from managing expenses to using sensor data or satellite imagery to better manage their farms.
🏭🇨🇭 Planetary, a Swiss startup, raised €3.5M from Cosun, an agricultural cooperative focused on plant-based ingredients, to scale its fermentation technology.
2️⃣🍷 🇫🇷 Moderato, a French startup, raised over €3M for its no-low alcohol wines. Also, French Bloom, another French startup, raised an undisclosed amount from LVMH for its alcohol-free, sparkling wine offerings.
🍈 🇺🇸 The Jackfruit Company, an American startup, raised $5M in a Series B extension for its jackfruit-based alternative meat alternatives.
🌱🇳🇱 Blue Radix, a Dutch startup, raised €5M for its AI solutions that optimise greenhouse management for growers.
🍴🇹🇷 Paket Mutfak, a Turkish startup, raised $2.7M for its cloud kitchen and food delivery operations.
🍫 🇺🇸 California Cultured, an American startup, raised an undisclosed but “significant” amount from Sparkalis, Belgium bakery giant Puratos’ CVC, for its lab-grown cocoa.
💥 🇺🇸 Tiamat Sciences, a US-based startup using molecular farming to develop ingredients that could be used in other alternative protein processes (such as growth factors), is shutting down as it was unable to attract additional funding.
Regulation & public support
🇬🇧 💰 UK food regulatory agency, the FSA, has been awarded £1.6M from the government to introduce a regulatory sandbox to facilitate the approval process for lab-grown and cultivated meat. 5 companies have already applied for regulatory approval in the UK.
🇫🇷 🥓 EU’s top courts have ruled that France cannot ban the use of “meaty” words for plant-based foods. That’s a strong win for French companies fearing that they would be treated unfairly.
Industry news & trends
🇺🇸 📱Noom, a US-based weight-loss app, with a subscription-based model, is now offering GLP-1 drugs (weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic) to help its users change their diet behaviour.
🇬🇧 🍾 Taittinger, a famous champagne house, is now actively producing sparking wine in the UK. The first bottles will be sold in the Spring.
