💸 Funding News
💊 🇬🇧 IM8, a startup co-founded by David Beckham, secured $1B for its “all-in-one” supplement through an unusual non-dilutive financing facility covering up to 70% of customer-acquisition costs and repaid through a capped share of the resulting revenues. This is unprecedented both in the format of the funding and in its size. IM8 is growing at a pace rarely seen for a D2C brand and shows strong consumer appetite for healthy ageing and longevity (including for pricey products like IM8).
🍽️🇺🇸 Wonder, a US startup, raised $650M at a $9B pre-money valuation to accelerate the growth of its integrated restaurant delivery platform. Beyond growth, the money will be used to invest in new areas such as robotics ahead of an IPO.
☕🇬🇧 Reformed, a British startup, raised $22M for its functional coffee and matcha brand internationally. Its products combine speciality beverages with ingredients such as collagen and creatine.
🍬🇺🇸 Final Boss Sour, a US startup, raised $4M for its sweets targeting gamers, with participation from Mondelēz’s SnackFutures Ventures, ahead of a major expansion into Walmart, Target and other national retailers.
🧈🇺🇸 Savour, a US startup, raised $32M for its fats and butter made through biomass fermentation of captured carbon dioxide. AAK is an investor and signed a two-year partnership to develop applications for dairy alternatives and baked goods.
🌾🇸🇬 Rize, a Singaporean startup, raised $31M to expand its low-methane rice platform across Southeast Asia, targeting more than 150,000 farmers and 300,000 hectares by the end of the decade.
🚜🇺🇸 Sabanto, a US startup, raised an undisclosed amount to increase production of its autonomy retrofit kits, which turn existing tractors into self-driving machines. Bayer and Yara participated as strategic investors.
🪰🇪🇸 InsectBiotech, a Spanish startup, raised €7.2M to expand its capacity for converting agricultural waste, particularly olive-processing residues, into proteins, oils and fertilisers.
♻️🇮🇳 BiofuelCircle, an Indian startup, raised $3.6M for its network of biomass banks, which aggregates agricultural residues and supplies biofuel producers and industrial groups including Reliance, Unilever, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola.
🌾🇮🇳 Anmasa, an Indian startup, raised $3.1M for its custom-milled flour, oils and spices on demand.
🍫🇺🇸 Posana, a US startup, raised $650K to scale its plant-based protein bar. The protein snack space is still expanding and has not yet reached its maturity.
⭐ Acquisitions, regulation, bankruptcies & partnerships
🥚🇺🇸 The EVERY Company announced a partnership with ADM to begin commercialisation in the US production of OvoPro, its precision-fermented egg-white protein, to be produced at ADM’s facilities.
🌿🇺🇾 Terraflos, a Uruguay-based personalised supplement company, acquired a majority stake in Peru’s +NUTRI Co in an eight-figure transaction, combining its bioactive ingredients with the startup’s AI-based functional-food formulation platform and expanding the brand across Latin America.
🛒🇺🇸 Instacart acquired Israeli computer-vision startup Arpalus to turn shelf videos captured by shoppers and smart carts into real-time inventory data for e-commerce fulfilment and in-store operations.
🛵🇺🇸 Uber agreed to acquire Germany’s Delivery Hero for $14.8B in shares, a deal that would nearly double its delivery footprint to almost 100 markets and create the largest platform outside China, subject to regulatory approval.
♻️🇬🇧 Winnow, a UK-based startup developing computer vision tools to fight food waste in restaurants, acquired Singaporean food-waste startup Lumitics to deepen its presence in Asia-Pacific and combine the companies’ tools.
🥇 Leading companies
🥤🇺🇸 PepsiCo’s second quarter exposed a widening geographic divide: international snack and beverage volumes grew, while North American demand remained weak despite price cuts and affordability initiatives. We can clearly see the impact of GLP-1 in North America, which is not yet affecting the rest of the world… for how long?
🤖🇬🇧 Ocado shares fell as much as 18% as installations for Kroger and Lotte were delayed, intensifying doubts about the growth of its technology-licensing model.
📊 Macro trends
🍺🇬🇧 Tom Holland’s non-alcoholic beer brand Bero is using sport as a growth platform, expanding from Target into bars, sporting events and World Cup watch parties. The brand generated nearly $10M in its first year and expects revenue to more than double in 2026.
🧀🇺🇸 Around 80% of cheese in the US and other major markets is now produced with fermentation-derived chymosin, rather than enzymes extracted from calves, a largely invisible biotechnology transition that could inform today’s debate around precision-fermented dairy and ingredient labelling.
🍠🇯🇵 Okinawa’s reversal from global longevity leader to above-average premature mortality among younger men illustrates how quickly population health can deteriorate when processed foods and sedentary lifestyles displace a traditional plant-rich diet, everyday movement and strong social connections.
