💸 Funding news
FOOD SCIENCE
🧀 🇫🇷 Verley, a French startup, raised €32M for its functionalised whey proteins created through precision fermentation. The funds will be used for commercial deployment in the US and production scale-up.
🧀🇳🇱 Those Vegan Cowboys, a Dutch startup, raised €2.5M in a single day via crowdfunding (and following a funding of €6.5M from traditional investors and industry corporations), to develop dairy proteins using precision fermentation.
🥗🇩🇰 Reduced, a Danish startup, raised €4M for its fermentation-based flavour ingredients made from food industry side streams.
☕ 🇧🇪 Koppie, a Belgian startup, raised €2.4M for its bean-free coffee brewed from yellow peas. The ingredient can be blended with coffee beans to create a hybrid, cheaper than a full coffee blend. We have tasted the product, and it’s surprisingly close to the real thing.
BRANDS
☕ 🇺🇸 Throne Sport Coffee, a US coffee brand, raised $10M, notably from athletes, to finance its growth. The brand positions itself at the intersection of performance nutrition and coffee.
🍵🇺🇸 Just Ice Tea, a US beverage brand, raised $9M to support national retail expansion and new flavour launches.
🫙🇺🇸 Maazah, a US brand, raised $2M to fund retail growth and distribution expansion for its dips and sauces rooted in Afghan family recipes
AGTECH
🌱🇬🇧 Resurrect Bio, a UK startup, raised $8.1M, notably from Corteva, a US agriculture company, to help crops fight off disease using gene editing.
🤖🇳🇴 Kilter, a Norwegian startup, raised €6.5M for its autonomous precision weeding robots. The round was led by Kubota, the Japanese agricultural equipment giant.
🤖🇪🇸 Grodi, a Spanish startup, raised €2.5M to deploy autonomous robots and computer vision systems in greenhouses.
🤖🇺🇸 Upside Robotics, a US startup, raised $7.5M for its autonomous robots that help reduce the amount of fertiliser used in corn fields.
🍓🇳🇿Forever Harvest, a New Zealand startup, raised ~$715K to create fruit and nut ingredients through plant-cell culture. It grows specific fruit and nut cells in bioreactors without the use of pesticides or genetic modification.
🌾🇺🇸 Brilliant Harvest, a US startup, raised $4M for its AI platform improving customer experience for the agriculture heavy machinery business, from acquisition to repairs.
🌱🇪🇸 IKOS Advanced, a Spanish agtech startup, raised €8M to fund its sensor systems and software that help farmers optimise input use and automate field operations.
FOOD SERVICE
🎙️🇺🇸 Slang AI, a US startup, raised $36M for its AI voice platform for the hospitality sector, which manages incoming calls, handling reservations and guest queries. Handling customer calls is one of the first concrete AI applications we could see in the food industry, starting with the hospitality industry, and then across many CPG brands, handling customer queries.
🍽️🇧🇷 Takeat, a Brazilian startup, raised $2.9M for its restaurant management software. The platform helps restaurants track and manage sales, costs, margins, cash flow and operational performance.
♻️🇮🇹 Nando, an Italian startup, raised €3.3M to scale its municipal and food waste optimisation technology.
🍳🇹🇷 Paket Mutfak, a Turkish startup, raised $38M to grow its multi-brand cloud kitchen model.
🍽️🇦🇺 EatClub, an Australian startup, raised ~$17M for its last-minute dining marketplace with the goal to attract patrons inside restaurants in quiet periods.
DELIVERY, RETAIL & PACKAGING
🍞🇪🇬 Breadfast, an Egyptian startup, raised $50M and plans for an IPO for its vertically integrated grocery delivery platform. It now includes pharmaceuticals and its own range of private label products (accounting for 40% of Breadfast’s grocery sales), which is quite unique in this category.
📦🇬🇧 KluraLabs, a UK startup, raised £8M for its shelf life-extending antimicrobial food packaging technology.
🚀🇮🇳 Inamo, an Indian startup, raised $8M to scale its quick commerce infrastructure platform. It helps brands and operators set up and run dark stores, handling tech, fleet, inventory and replenishment.
🥖🇩🇪 Foodforecast, a German startup, raised €8M for its demand-forecasting platform for ultra-fresh food supply chains, helping retailers automate production planning and cut food waste.
📦🇺🇸 Pepper, a US startup, raised $50M to expand its B2B ordering and operating software for food distributors.
💳🇲🇦 WafR, a Moroccan startup, raised $4M to expand financial and loyalty services for corner stores in the country.
⭐ Acquisitions, Regulation & Partnerships
🌿🇺🇸 Plantible Foods received FDA GRAS status for its Rubisco protein, derived from duckweed.
🍄🇨🇳 ZhongGu Junchuang, a Chinese startup, is building a new R&D and production hub in western China to scale up production of fungal proteins and biomaterials.
🍫🇧🇪 Puratos partnered with California Cultured, a US-based startup, to launch chocolate made with cell-based cocoa, aiming to bring the first cultured-cocoa ingredient to professional chocolatiers in the US by the end of 2026.
📊 Leading Companies & Macro Trends
🐄🇳🇱 The Netherlands is facing a deep agricultural crisis as the EU ends its nitrogen derogation, stripping Dutch farmers of their long-held exemption that allowed them to apply 250kg of manure per hectare per year (vs. the EU standard of 170kg). Hundreds of farms are already closing each year, and the new PM has pledged to cut agricultural nitrogen emissions by 42–46% from 2019 levels by 2030.
🐔🇬🇧 Nando’s, KFC, Burger King and 5 other UK restaurant chains dropped the “Better Chicken Commitment”, the welfare pledge requiring them to source slower-growing chicken breeds.
🥩🇬🇧 UK restaurants are quietly rolling back vegetarian and vegan menu options, as plant-based demand continues to soften. Chains are refocusing on higher-margin meat dishes.
📱🇨🇳 China has issued sweeping new regulations on food livestreaming, cracking down on misleading reviews and unverified health claims.
👃🇺🇸 An AI-powered machine has been developed that converts photos into corresponding smells, analysing the visual composition of an image to synthesise a scent.
💊🇨🇭 Nestlé launched its Vital nutritional drinks range, targeting the fast-growing healthy ageing market. The products are formulated to address the specific nutritional needs of older adults.
