💸 Funding News

🤖 Signal of the week: automation is coming fast for the food supply chain. This week, we noticed 3 sizeable deals involving different types of food players:

• 🚁🇮🇳 Airbound, an Indian startup, raised $37M for its autonomous delivery drones. DoorDash participated in the funding, which should enable the startup to scale to 10,000 autonomous flights per day.
• 🚚🇺🇸 Gatik, a US startup, raised $200M for its autonomous middle-mile delivery trucks, two months after signing a multi-year deal with PepsiCo. It already operates fully driverless trucks commercially, including 41 vehicles that move Frito-Lay products, and says it has secured $600M in contracted revenue.
• 🚁🇺🇸 SiFly, a US startup, raised $20M to scale production of its long-endurance electric drones. They can carry up to 10 lbs over a 90-mile range

Taken together, these deals show that beyond replacing food delivery drivers, drones and autonomous trucks could have a big impact on the food supply chain.

🍄🇧🇪 MAASH, a Belgian fermentation startup, secured €12.15M to scale its mycoprotein technology, including a demonstration plant in France. Sugar producers Tereos and Nordzucker participated in the equity portion of the financing.

🧫🇪🇪 ÄIO, an Estonian biotech startup, secured €1.94M in public funding for a three-year project to develop a digital platform aimed at reducing the cost of microbial oil and fat production.

🐶🇭🇰 Buddy Bites, a Hong Kong startup, raised $4.2M for its subscription-based pet food business.

🌱🇳🇱 VitalFluid, a Dutch startup, raised €17.2M for its crop protection technology, which uses electricity, air and water to create a residue-free alternative to chemical fungicides.

🌱🇺🇸 TerraBlaster, a US startup, raised $12.5M to commercialise technology derived from Mars-rover sensing that measures nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other soil properties in real time while travelling at tractor speed.

🐄🇬🇧 Breedr, a British startup, raised €23M to expand its livestock management platform globally. Breedr creates a digital record for individual cattle from birth through the supply chain.

🌾🇹🇭 Living Roots, a Thai startup, raised an undisclosed amount to grow its biological crop-input platform across South and Southeast Asia.

⭐ Acquisitions, regulation, bankruptcies & partnerships

🥗🇺🇸 Berry Street merged with Indian healthtech startup Healthify to create a larger metabolic-health platform combining Healthify’s AI nutrition technology with Berry Street’s network of dietitians and insurance-covered care.

🏷️🇪🇺 EU lawmakers are seeking (again) to further restrict plant-based meat labels, proposing to add terms including “burger”, “sausage”, “nuggets” and “ham” to the list of names plant-based products cannot use. This would extend the restrictions agreed earlier this year on 31 other meat-related terms; the proposal is still under discussion, with a parliamentary vote expected later.

🌾🇮🇱 CropX acquired NIR spectroscopy company SCIO. SCIO’s sensors measure crop characteristics such as moisture, protein, oil and sugar, allowing CropX to connect agronomic recommendations during cultivation with measurable harvest outcomes.

🍣🇺🇸 Impact Food is shutting down after more than five years developing plant-based whole-cut tuna and salmon. The startup had raised more than $2M. Its founder highlighted how consumer habits, economics and timing remained major barriers.

🌾🇸🇬 Singapore is considering a $500M climate-adaptation fund for food supply chains, potentially targeting agriculture and aquaculture projects across Southeast Asia that struggle to attract conventional financing.

🥇 Leading companies

🧫🇺🇸 ADM is investing $55.5M to expand precision-fermentation capacity in Iowa. The project received $2.23M in state tax credits and follows ADM’s agreement to manufacture The EVERY Company’s precision-fermented egg proteins.

🐔🇺🇸 Costco has kept its famous rotisserie chicken at $4.99 since 2009 despite US retail chicken prices almost doubling, in part through aggressive vertical integration and automation.

📊 Macro trends

💉🇺🇸 GLP-1 users are spending nearly 4% less on groceries than comparable households, while shifting their baskets away from pasta, bakery products and other carb-heavy staples towards protein, fibre, seafood and functional nutrition. GLP-1 users already represent more than $660B in spending power across CPG, general merchandise, and quick-service restaurants.

🐔🌍 Chicken has become the world’s most produced meat, and its growth is accelerating: the number of chickens produced globally rose from 48.3B in 2006 to 76.2B in 2023, while annual production growth has recently accelerated above 3%. Its low cost, feed efficiency and cultural versatility are helping it gain share from beef and pork, but the next constraint may be the ability to build farms and processing capacity amid disease, pollution and growing opposition to intensive livestock production.