💸 Funding News
🥬🇺🇸 Hippo Harvest, a US startup, raised $30M to scale its robotic greenhouse production of leafy greens.
🥩🇵🇹 Brainr, a Portuguese startup, raised €1.5M from Portugal Ventures to fuel international expansion of its AI-powered operating system for meat processing facilities, already covering 65% of Portugal’s poultry production. Brainr was among the 50 startups that DigitalFoodLab recently selected in the 2026 European FoodTech 50.
🍽️🇺🇸 inKind, a US startup, raised $320M to expand its restaurant-funding network.
🌱🇳🇱 Aardaia, a Dutch startup, raised €5M for its crop-breeding platform focused on aardaker, a nitrogen-fixing protein tuber crop .
🥛🇸🇬 TurtleTree, a Singaporean precision-fermentation startup, raised undisclosed funding from Danish biotech giant Novonesis, which also signed an exclusive deal to scale and commercialise its cow-free lactoferrin.
🥩🇳🇱 Mosa Meat, a Dutch cultivated-meat pioneer, secured a €875,000 loan from Dutch state investor Invest International to support regulatory expansion into the UK, US, Canada, Australia and Singapore.
🍓🇬🇧 Dogtooth Technologies, a British startup, raised £14M to commercialise its AI fruit-harvesting robots, including deployments with Dyson Farming.
🔬🇧🇪 Polysense, a Belgian startup, raised $10.7M for its AI quality-control platform for food manufacturers.
🍑🇧🇪 Optiflux, a Belgian startup, raised $2.5M for its fruit-quality management tool, from the field to storage.
⭐ Acquisitions, corporate investments and developments
🌱🇪🇸 Kimitec, a Spanish bioinput startup, is getting acquired by a private equity firm (DVC Partners).
🌾🇺🇸 Chipotle, via its Cultivate Next fund, invested in six startups, with topics ranging from soil health and waste reduction to restaurant digital identity.
🚁🇮🇪 Manna, an Irish drone-delivery startup, plans a major US expansion, building a manufacturing hub in Oklahoma, expected to employ ~1,000 people, backed by its April $50M raise and a favourable regulatory push under the Trump administration.
🥇 Leading companies
🥩🇧🇷 JBS, the world’s largest meat group, scraps a key climate goal, dropping its 2040 net-zero target that covered Scope 3 supplier emissions, citing difficulty tracking indirect emissions from the cattle iit’srchases (it’s, however, hard to believe that the complexity suddenly appeared now).
⚡🇺🇸 Nutrabolt, a US energy-drink and supplements company, is preparing for an IPO, that could raise up to $1B.
🧊🇬🇧 M&S is investing in fridges built to withstand 45C heat, after refrigeration units broke down in several stormonth’sng last month’s UK heatwave, with CEO Stuart Machin saying t”e retaileit’s “assuming it’s goin” to get hotter”.
🚜🇺🇸 John Deere, a leading US agricultural machinery company, agreed to a 10-year right-to-repair for farmers following a settlement with the FTC. It will give farmers and independent repair shops the same diagnostic tools, software, and technical manuals it currently reserves for authorised dealers.
📊 Macro trends and leading companies
🥚🇺🇸 US egg producers gamed prices while blaming bird flu, according to an antitrust complaint showing that executives privately colluded via text messages to manipulate the egg price benchmark, while publicly attributing record prices to avian flu.
🍌🇺🇸 Banana flavour is moving intoo new US food and drink territory, with Barebells, MDunkin’arbucks, and Dunkin’ all launching banana-flavoured products this year, as the fruit becomes newly linked to protein and functionaJapan’sages.
🍱🇯🇵 Japan’s government released a 2040 public-private investment roadmap“allocatin” $6.2B to “new foods”, a national push on alternative proteins and novel food tech.
🌭 🥇 HappyVore established a new record for the biggest plant-based BBQ. The French plant-based meat alternative HappyVore gathered more than 2,000 people to set an official Guinness World Records title for the largest plant-based BBQ, serving over 30,000 vegan sausages and nuggets.
