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5 notable deals and things to know this week (2024 – week #25)

Published on June 18, 2024

Startup news and deals

🇨🇭🧪 Microcaps AG, a Swiss startup, raised CHF 9.3 M to expand its microencapsulation production capacity. It has applications in fragrances and nutrition.

🇦🇺🚜  Farmbot, an Australian startup, raised 4.6€M for its agriculture platform to monitor water and other inputs.

 

🇸🇪 🍄 Mycorena, a well-financed Sweden-based startup, announced that it is halting the development of its large-scale mycoprotein facility due to low investor interest in capital-intensive projects. Indeed, in the past 36 months, we observed a strong increase in the number of companies starting to build large-scale biomass fermentation facilities… without proof that the market was present for their output (actually, we observed quite the opposite with declining volumes).

🇺🇸 💥 SciFi, a US-based cultivated meat startup, is shutting down as it was unable to raise additional capital. Once seen as one of the most promising startups in the space (and with $40M raised), it had a quite different approach from other cellular agriculture players. It looked to become an ingredient supplier for plant-based companies aiming to improve the taste of vegan alternatives by adding a small percentage of cultivated meat inside.

Industry news & trends

🌍 ❓ Where are the deals? Where is the money? Even with the best goodwill (such as inserting deals on fragrance-oriented startups), few deals are being announced. In a couple of weeks, we’ll see how investments evolved in the second quarter, but it already seems that we are going through a new decline in terms of funding and deals. This is something that we expected, and that should continue at least until the end of the year as all eyes are focused on two events:

  • US presidential elections: each time, investments decline before the elections (and even more if they are consequential)
  • Interest rates: funds are holding their cash, hoping for a cut in rates, in order to be able to raise money from their LPs (limited partners).

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