Startup Funding News

🇺🇸 🧬 Nourish, an American health-tech company, raised $70M and becomes a new unicorn to grow its AI-driven personalised nutrition service for chronic disease prevention. Online platforms connecting consumers to dieticians are one of the biggest areas of growth in the overall AgriFoodTech ecosystem. This is one of the most visible consequences of the GLP-1 hype and also a sign that food personalisation could again be a hot topic!

🇺🇸 🐄 Hoofprint, an American startup, raised $15M to develop enzymes that would modify cows’ microbiome to reduce their methane emissions by up to 80%. Microbiome modification is the fourth pillar of methane reduction solutions alongside vaccines, feed supplements and methane capture. A combination of two or more of these methods could have a dramatic impact on the world’s methane emissions. However, for now, we don’t know how to finance the use of any of them.

🇺🇸 💰 Growers Edge, an American agri-fintech platform, raised $25M to scale its insurance-backed digital financial tools for farmers. This is highly interesting as there are too few solutions to help finance the transition to regenerative agriculture.

🇬🇧 🐟 Ace Aquatec, a British aquaculture tech startup, raised €11.7M for its tools that make fish farming more sustainable and efficient.

🇬🇧 🧠 Puresport, a British wellness brand, raised £3.6M to grow its adaptogen and nootropic product line.

🇬🇧 🍷 WineFi, a UK-based startup, raised €1.5M to build a platform for wine investing aimed at a broader range of consumers.

🇳🇱 🍪 Peckish, a Dutch startup, raised €800K to expand its range of healthy snacks with natural ingredients.

🇺🇸 🥩 Chomps, an American protein (beef and other animal jerky) snack brand, secured a $100M credit line from Wells Fargo to expand its distribution. Protein + clean label (more or less) + snack = winning formula? At least, it seems so if we look at who the rising brands are in most Western countries.

🇺🇸 🧪 Sennos, an American biomanufacturing startup, raised $15M to scale its modular fermentation reactor technology.

Acquisitions, Partnerships & Shutdowns

🇬🇧💰 Deliveroo, a British food delivery startup, could be bought by DoorDash (its US rival and one of the global leaders) for £2.7B (to be compared to the £7.6B valuation at the IPO only four years ago).

🇧🇭🇬🇧 🤝 Calo, a Bahraini foodtech startup, acquired two British companies to enter the UK personalised nutrition and meal delivery market.

🇺🇸 🧱 Freight Farms, an American vertical farming company (operating containers), filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, ceasing operations entirely.

🇫🇷🇸🇪 🤝 Standing Ovation (France) partnered with Tetra Pak (Sweden) to scale the production of animal-free casein proteins through precision fermentation.

🇺🇸 🧊 Tomorrow, an American smart fridge startup, shut down operations. Naming your startup “Tomorrow” leads to very bad messaging when it dies “we’ve made the decision to shut down tomorrow”. Let’s hope that’s only a message for the entrepreneurs seeking to invent the future of the fridge, and not for the whole FoodTech ecosystem.

Leading Companies & Macro Trends

🇬🇧 🇬🇷  Arda Biomaterials, a British startup, raised $5.25M to turn beer waste into leather alternatives. Also, CoffeeCo Upcycle, a Greek circular economy startup, raised €715K to transform spent coffee grounds into bioplastics and skincare products. Upcycling has long been a trending agrifood theme, but here (as in other recent deals), we see a new (small) wave of players seeking to turn food byproducts into something other than food and, hence, potentially finding a viable business model.

🇺🇸 🧬 GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are reshaping consumer food behaviour in the US — consumers are demanding lower calories, fewer ingredients, and functional benefits (which is well and good when said like that, but quite challenging to achieve alongside taste and clean label in a food product).

🇬🇧 🍧 The UK may extend its sugar tax to milkshakes and plant-based milks under new Treasury proposals to fight obesity.