💸 Funding News
🍅🇺🇸 ProducePay, a US company, raised $140M for its shift towards data and technology services for the fresh-produce supply chain, in addition to its financing model. It expects to advance $1B to growers in 2027.
🎙️🇫🇷 Tellia, a French startup, raised €4.3M for its voice-AI interface that lets farmers and agronomists capture and structure field data simply by speaking.
🌱🇳🇱 Gravity Gardens, a Dutch startup, raised €2.6M to industrialise its dry, chemical-free seed activation technology, which aims to improve crop establishment without water, chemicals or seed coatings.
🥬🇸🇬 N&E Innovations, a Singaporean startup, raised $1.73M for its antimicrobial ingredient derived from agricultural waste such as cashew husks. It can be incorporated into packaging or applied directly to produce, and extends fresh-produce shelf life by up to four times.
🍽️🇳🇿 First Table, a New Zealand startup, raised $7.2M for its restaurant-booking platform in Australia. The platform offers diners up to 50% off food at off-peak times and already has more than 3.9M users and 5,000 participating restaurants across 65+ cities globally.
🥗🇮🇹 Foorban, an Italian foodtech startup, raised €7.2M to expand its workplace food offering in Italy and abroad. It combines centrally prepared meals with smart fridges as an alternative to conventional corporate canteens.
💳🇫🇷 Olenbee, a French startup, raised €7M for its employee benefits platform. It lets employees use their normal bank cards for expenses such as meals, then automatically identifies and reimburses eligible purchases.
🧬🇧🇷 Doroth, a Brazilian startup, raised $4.5M for its molecular diagnostics technology. Its devices automate testing for pathogens and resistance genes across crops, seeds, grains, milk and meat.
✅🇮🇹 Biorsaf, an Italian startup, raised €5.2M and acquired Cooki to build an integrated food safety platform spanning quality, traceability, nutrition, costing and labelling.
🥤🇬🇧 Feisty, a British startup, raised £500k for its plant-based protein sodas. The drinks contain 10g of protein per can, illustrating how the protein trend is moving beyond bars and shakes into mainstream beverages.
🍮🇺🇸 Petit Pot, a US company, raised a seven-figure amount for its French-inspired premium refrigerated desserts to accelerate product innovation and widen distribution.
🍔🇮🇳 Swish, an Indian startup, raised $24M to expand its 10-minute food-delivery network into new cities and strengthen its supply chain. It plans to build a network of over 1,000 kitchens during the next five years.
⭐ Bankruptcies & partnerships
🥚🇫🇮 Onego Bio partnered with US brand Zen Waffles to supply its white protein produced through precision fermentation for high-protein waffles.
🪰🇫🇷 The Agronutris insect-production facility was placed under judicial restructuring less than a year after the business was rescued by the arrival of La Compagnie des Insectes. The industrial project produces insect-derived ingredients for aquaculture and pet food, making the latest difficulties another illustration of the challenging economics of Europe’s insect industry.
📊 Macro trends
🥬🇨🇳 China’s latest food-safety scandal shows the limits of technology alone, after traders were filmed dipping cabbage in formaldehyde to prolong freshness. Despite major investments in AI, blockchain and traceability, China’s highly fragmented food system remains difficult to monitor: digital tools can make records more traceable, but they cannot guarantee that the information entered into them is accurate.
☕🇺🇸 Starbucks is investing more than $1B to turn its coffee shops back into social spaces, adding armchairs, rugs, books and more seating to as many as 9,000 North American cafés. The strategy reverses years of optimisation around fast digital transactions and bets that physical experience and human connection can differentiate Starbucks from faster-growing competitors.
