FoodTech Weekly #176 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #176

Hi there,

The proportion of down rounds in Europe increased from 14.8% to 21.3% for the full year of 2023 (as of Sep 30, 2023), the highest since 2020 (a down round is when the value of a business, such as a startup, is below the value of that same business during e.g. a previous funding round). Nordic9 observes that hiring across European startups has decreased by almost 40% year-over-year, and that the number of investment deals into startups in Europe is down 30% from the typical 9K yearly deals. So we’re still very much in recession land.

What else is new? I was asked by EU Startups for some ClimateTech startups that people should keep an eye on. I mentioned Meadow and NitroCapt. But could’ve easily listed 100 more. There’s so many exciting things happening out there. So — despite the current downrounds and the hiring decrease, the future is still worth looking forward to.

This week's rundown:

• Clever Carnivore is fois gras’d with $7M Seed for cultivated meat

• Farmless snaps up €4.8M to use unique approach to ferment proteins

• For the dog that has everything, there’s now a dog craft soda.

Let's go!

Conversations

Noteworthy

• Chicago biotech startup Clever Carnivore has bagged a $7M Seed round led by Lever VC and joined by e.g. Stray Dog Capital, Newfund Capital, Valo Ventures, Thia Ventures, and McWin Capital Partners. Clever Carnivore aims to produce cost-competitive cultivated meat, starting with pork sausage. The Clever Bratwurst prototype will be unveiled in early 2024.

• Danish agtech startup Bioomix has landed $6.7M in fresh funding from Westhill Capital, Pre Seed Ventures, and Planetary Impact Ventures. The company is working on leveraging naturally occurring microbes to replace pesticides and chemical fertilizer.

• A 20-storey urban vertical farm has opened in Chengdu, China, said to be the world’s tallest unmanned veggie farm. It can reportedly produce a lettuce harvest every 35 days. For a long but great rehash of the last 10 years in vertical farming, see this AgFunder News piece by Jennifer Marston.

• Singapore-based Meatiply has done the first close, at $3.75M, of a seed round co-led by AgFunder and Wavemaker Partners, and supported by SEEDS Capital. The startup optimizes cells for cultivated meat, hybrid plant-based products, and also for the nutraceutical and wellness markets.

• Dutch company Farmless has raised a €4.8M (appr. $5.2M) Seed round backed by World Fund, Vorwerk Ventures, Revent, and a group of angel investors. The company uses a liquid made from CO2, hydrogen, nitrogen, and renewable energy to ferment proteins (with 5000x less land than beef), that can help replace animal-based proteins.

• JALA of Indonesia has reeled in a $13.1M Series A round led by Intudo Ventures and joined by e.g. Sinar Mas Digital Ventures, Mirova, and Meloy Fund (Deliberate Capital). The company develops solutions for the shrimp farming industry, e.g. a mobile app that allows farmers to record, monitor, and analyze every aspect of their shrimp
  farming in real time, for improved decision making.

• Biotech company Cradle of the Netherlands and Switzerland has secured $24M in funding to use AI to help scientists design and engineer proteins faster and more cost-effectively. Cradle’s platform can be used to create products with applications in e.g. sustainable food, medicines, materials, and much more.

• Carbon Maps of Lille, France scored €3M (appr. $3.2M) in extended pre-seed from investors including Daphni, Breega, Back Market, and Samaipata. The company synthesizes and analyzes data across the entire food chain from farm to fork, and calculates several impact indicators including carbon footprint, biodiversity impact, water use, and animal welfare.

• Food discount stickers may go away, as an increasing number of supermarkets are adopting AI-powered dynamic pricing, where a digital price tag is displayed on the food item shelf or on the product itself. The prices can then be updated automatically when a particular item approaches its sell-by-date or expiry date. The system can also determine how much stock the store is holding of a particular item, and historical demand for it in previous months and years. One of the solutions providers mentioned in the article is Wasteless, which I covered in FoodTech Weekly last month.

• DigitalFoodLab released its annual report on trends shaping the future of food, covering 28 trends grouped into six megatrends (sustainable proteins, the resilient farm, the smart supply chain, food automation, food as medicine, and instant retail). This is an impressive 67 page report worth reading. Here’s for example DigitalFoodLab’s estimates of the time it’ll take for these 28 trends to reach maturity:

• According to ReFED, Americans were responsible for wasting about 312M lbs (141M kgs) of food during Thanksgiving, the equivalent of 710K metric tons of CO2, or driving a car 73K times around the equator.

• Early-stage VC Rockstart, which has launched funds in agrifood, emerging tech, and energy tech, just launched its fourth fund, also focused on agrifood, aiming for a €50M size.

• At COP28, some 130 countries have signed a pledge to accelerate action on transforming agriculture and food to combat climate change. The signatories make up 76% of food-based GHGs, and produce 70% of food globally. The global food system accounts for about 25-30% of total global GHGs.

• Forward Fooding has written a quick helpful primer on CRISPR; what it is, how it can help improve food and agriculture, key startups and companies in the sector, and more.
  

• E-FISHient Protein of Israel, a collaboration between BioMeat FoodTech and the Volcani Institute, has unveiled its first prototype of a cell-cultivated tilapia food filet.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• La Vie (France) is looking for a European Sales Manager… Zeew (Estonia) wants to find advisors/mentors/industry experts and perhaps even a co-founder… NitroCapt (Sweden) is recruiting a CFO… Djuce (Sweden/U.S.) is hiring a Head of USA… Cultimate (Germany) is on the lookout for a Stem Cell Biologist.

Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.

Random Stuff

• “The Loneliest Cow in Manhattan” (Ambrook Research)

• This is an old visual (from 2007 or so), but I’m still excited about it — after cell phones were introduced in the Indian state of Kerala between 1997-2001, researchers could see how e.g. the price volatility ended between fishermen and wholesalers, and that ‘consumer and producer welfare increased.’

• The first transatlantic flight fueled by fat and sugar just happened (by the way, that’s pretty much my own diet).

• The number of Amazon warehouse robots has increased from 1,000 to 750,000 between 2013 and 2023.

• Top Paraguayan official Arnaldo Chamorro of Paraguay’s Agriculture Ministry has stepped down after he accidentally granted government recognition to a fictional country, the United States of Kailasa (led by a self-styled Hindu guru and wanted Indian criminal).

• U.S. company Jones Soda just launched a craft soda for dogs, in three flavors (chicken, beef, and turkey & gravy).

I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to I Feel It Coming by The Weeknd and Daft Punk. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.

Disclosures: I'm founder of Solvable Syndicate. I’m an operating advisor to VC/investment firms Nordic FoodTech VC, Mudcake, and Blume Equity. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Norrsken Accelerator. I'm an advisor to BIOMILQ, FoodHack, Hooked, Ignitia, Improvin, IRRIOT, Juicy Marbles, Lupinta, NitroCapt, Oceanium, petgood, Rootically, Stockeld Dreamery, Transship, VEAT, and Volta Greentech; in some of these startups, I have equity.

Boring disclaimer: The newsletter content is intended only to provide general and preliminary information to folks interested in FoodTech, and shall not be construed as the basis for any investment decision or strategy. I assume no liability in regards to any investment, divestment, or retention decision taken by readers of this newsletter content.