5 NOTABLE DEALS THIS WEEK
🚲 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 More information on the acquisition of Cajoo by Flink announced last week. The deal is said to have included:
- the acquisition of Cajoo for a price between €90 and €100M
- an additional investment of €60 to €70M into Flink at a €4,8B valuation
🥛 🇮🇱 Imagindairy, an Israeli startup using precision fermentation to recreate dairy proteins, raised an additional $15M to “extend” its seed round (announced in November 2021). This kind of “extension” is getting more common as entrepreneurs (and investors) are looking to advertise larger and larger deals at each stage to show that they are as well-financed as the leaders of their ecosystems. And $15M is now definitively too small for a series A (which usually follows a seed) in the alternative protein space.
🥬 🇺🇸 Vestaron, a US startup, raised $82M for its biological alternative to chemical-based crop control products. The startup uses peptides (proteins made up of a short chain of amino acids that decompose and are harmless to the environment and humans).
🍪 🇮🇸 Good Good, an Icelandic startup selling breakfast no-sugar-added products, raised $20M.
🥩 🇪🇸 Cubiq, a Spanish startup developing lab-grown fat for plant-based alternatives to meat, raised $6M. Cargill, the commodity giant, is among the investors.
OTHER NOTABLE NEWS
This week, the economist made its cover on “the coming food catastrophe”. The cover image is striking as it nudges the situation in Ukraine (🇺🇦 colors stand for the large wheat fields and the blue sky).
But beyond the war in Europe, other problems are already making the situation dire:
- extreme temperature in India led to a ban on wheat exports announced this week.
- a lack of rain in many of the world’s breadbaskets.
