Following the release of DigitalFoodLab’s report on the state of European FoodTech (you can download the report here), we are planning a webinar on the state of FoodTech investments (in Europe and globally) on the 30th of April (11:30 CET).

For someone who has spent a decade following the AgriFoodTech innovation ecosystem, one of the most striking findings of this report is that among all the pessimistic talk, alternative protein investments are actually doing fine. They are even doing beyond that fine; they are doing great in Europe!

First, let’s define what we are talking about: here we are following two sub-categories of our large “food science” ecosystem (defined here alongside the other five categories and 30 FoodTech components):

• Alternative proteins: companies creating new ingredients or products that should be an alternative or a substitute for animal proteins (egg, dairy, meat, etc.).
• Functional ingredients: startups innovating with the same technologies to develop ingredients with health or functional benefits, such as sugar alternatives, cacao substitutes, etc.

In both categories, we find the same set of technologies, from short-term plant-based innovations to more futuristic ones, including molecular farming and plant-cell culture (all are defined and illustrated here).

As you can see on the graph above, investments in these technologies and startups are far from declining alongside the rest of the FoodTech ecosystem (overall, AgriFoodTech investments are down 70% from their peak of 2021), but they actually kept rising.
To put that in context, global funding for alternative proteins alone has plummeted to somewhere below $1B in 2024. Europe, which was almost absent from this ecosystem a few years ago (just looking at the left part of the graph is painful), now represents about 50% of the global funding for alternative proteins.

We could have expected this rise to be linked to a handful of very large deals, as observed in other FoodTech categories in 2024 (where we observed a decline in small, early-stage deals), but that’s quite the opposite. First, as you can see on the map above, this surge of investments is relatively evenly spread in terms of:

• geography without a clear leading hub, but rather a good number of small hubs
• technologies and focus: while the increase is mostly due to an increase in funding towards protein design and protein discovery, plant-based startups, precision fermentation ingredients, biomass fermentation… are also doing quite well.

Last but not least, we could have assumed that this would not be a very sustainable trend. However, as you can see on the graph above displaying the number of deals by sub-category, alternative protein deals were leading by far, with functional ingredients not far away. This number of deals, notably in small startups, shows an appetite from investors and hopefully a willingness to fund these startups further down the line as they mature.

I’m not naturally optimistic (or said otherwise; I’m French), but for once, I feel that the European ecosystem is really moving in the right direction. And this goes beyond funding: 2024 was also very positive in terms of

• Regulatory news from the US for European startups (21st.Bio, Verley, etc.)
• Support from the EU for alternative proteins, at least through grants.

If you’re looking for what’s next in sustainable food innovation, Europe is where momentum is building. Let’s talk if you want to understand how to leverage opportunities to become or stay a leader.