FoodTech Weekly #183 by Daniel S. Ruben

FoodTech Weekly #183

Hi there,

This is my brain, every week, right after hitting the Send button for the newsletter:

Have you seen You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment on Netflix yet? It spotlights a study conducted by Stanford University featuring 22 sets of identical twins placed on either omnivorous or vegan diets (spoiler alert: the vegan diet had a positive impact on cardiovascular health, with lower levels of cholesterol, insulin, and body weight). Anyways, I was just happy to see Juicy Marbles mentioned in the documentary, because I’m a proud advisor to this crazy band of Slovenian hipsters who just launched their plant-based steak in 350 U.K. Tesco stores, at a lower price than animal steak.

This week's rundown:

• ‘Com més serem, més riurem’; Heura of Barcelona bags €40M funding round

• Jua of Switzerland lands $16M for AI powered weather forecasting platform, helping e.g. ag companies

• First ever genetically modified food crop (purple tomatoes) now sold to U.S. home gardeners

Let's go!

Conversations

Next week!

Noteworthy

• ProducePay of Los Angeles, U.S. has bagged $38M in Series D funding. The company runs a ‘predictable commerce platform’ for growers and buyers which brings efficiency and helps cut supply chain waste. The round was led by Syngenta Group Ventures, and joined by e.g. Anterra Capital, Astanor Ventures, and Commonfund.

• Jua based in Zurich, Switzerland has scored $16M in funding for its AI models that aim to predict weather and climate patterns for companies in e.g. agriculture, energy, and insurance. The round was led by 468 Capital and the Green Generation Fund.

• Yali Bio of California has created the world’s first breast milk fat (Oleic-Palmitic-Oleic, or OPO) made from yeast using precision fermentation, Green Queen reports. OPO is an essential component for infant health, allowing them to absorb nutrients. The breakthrough could help infant formula producers to eventually match nutrition more closely to human milk.

• Australian food distribution platform Yume has secured a $2M Seed round. By connecting food manufacturers that have surplus stock with business and charities, Yume helps cut food waste. (h/t FoodHack).

• Barcelona, Spain-based Heura has closed a €40M (appr. $43M) Series B round, backed by Upfield, Unovis, ECBF VC and New Tree Impact. Heura produces additive-free alt protein meat and fish products (or as Heura calls it, ‘successors’ to these products), and plans to go into cheese next. The company hopes to reach profitability with the new cash injection.

• U.S. low sodium manufacturer MicroSalt has raised £3.1M (appr. $3.9M) through an IPO in London last week. The company says it can provide the same salt taste with 50% less sodium. High sodium consumption is linked to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, which MicroSalts aims to address.

• Smart irrigation startup Agrow Analytics of Malaga, Spain, has raked in €650K in funding, led by GoHub Ventures, Demium Capital, and First Drop. The company has developed a system that aggregates data and provides accurate advance recommendations around where, when, and how much to irrigate. This helps improve farmer water footprint.

• A new meta study which evaluated consumer acceptance of upcycled foods (transforming food by-products and waste materials into new, edible food products) found that consumers can be skeptical, but acceptance is increased when communicating how upcycled foods contribute to health, nutrition, sustainability, and food waste outcomes.

• FoodPilot of France has nabbed €4.5M (appr. $4.8M) for its digital food safety management platform (h/t DigitalFoodLab).

• Home gardeners can now buy seeds of gene-edited purple tomatoes produced by Norfolk Plant Sciences. The tomatoes have genes from snapdragon flowers which brings the purple pigment, but also high levels of anthocyanin, a health-promoting compound. This is the first genetically modified food crop to be directly marketed to home gardeners in the U.S. (I wrote about this back in May 2023, and before that in Sept 2022 — guess that means I’m excited).

• U.S. food-as-medicine startup Foodsmart has banked $10M as part of a $40M Series C from three U.S. healthcare systems as well as 62 Ventures and the American College of Cardiology. Foodsmart provides personalized meal planning, a large network of registered dietitians, and a broad marketplace to make healthy eating simple and affordable.

• COLIPI of Hamburg, Germany has clinched €1.8M (appr. $1.9M) from the High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF), the Innovationsstarter Fonds Hamburg (IFH), Nidobirds Ventures GmbH and Stefan De Loecker. The company can extract carbon from e.g. the air or from organic side streams such as from the ag industry, and then convert it via a patented fermentation process to valuable biomaterials such as palm oil and petroleum.

• Dutch agrifoodtech VC Future Food Fund (FFF) has announced the final closing of its €40M Fund II, backed by e.g. the European Investment Fund. FFF invests in Seed and Series A companies in Western Europe, in areas such as regenerative agriculture, zero-impact foods, and circular systems.

• VC money focused on agrifood is still just 2% of the total global investment pool, despite a growth of agrifood focused VC funds from 42 in 2013 to over 280 in 2023. This, and much more interesting info, in this AgFunder article.

• Estonian last-mile-delivery robot scaleup Starship Technologies has picked up $90M in new funding. The company’s autonomous robots are making deliveries in 80 locations in e.g. the U.S., U.K., and Estonia. It hopes to expand to more countries this year.

News from the FoodTech Weekly community

• Kaffe Bueno (Denmark) is hiring a COO… Umami Bioworks (Singapore) is recruiting a Lab Manager… Foreverland (Italy) is looking for a Chocolate Technologist… Hyfé (U.S.) has an open position for a Process Development Associate… FUL (U.S.) has several open roles incl. B2B Sales Lead, and Head of Food Technology.

• The Conference on Science and Technology for Meat and Dairy Analogues is taking place July 2-3 in Wageningen, The Netherlands.

• Venture For ClimateTech is recruiting its next cohort of entrepreneurs working to save the planet. Virtual program benefits include up to $50K in non-dilutive funding, weekly 1:1 mentoring & programming, and investor matching. Learn more & apply here.

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

Random Stuff

• A food delivery robot in Helsinki crashed into a car, then fled the scene, its safety flag happily waving.

• WeightWatchers’ share price has had its worst month ever, after Eli Lilly announced it’s sell weight-loss drugs directly to the public.

• The Annual Art Sled Rally in Minneapolis, U.S. had to be held on cardboard, as there wasn’t any snow.

My reaction to snowless sledding events, celebrating fossil fuel trucks that contribute to climate change that cause snowless winters:

• The Human Story of Phosphorus (on Ambrook)

• Three years later, and I’m still mesmerized by this dancing guy:

• I know, I know, ‘The future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed’ and all of that. But this all feels like an episode from Black Mirror or the Silicon Valley series to me (6 sec video).

• A toddler got stuck after looking for a toy in a claw machine in an Australian shopping mall. The police, which had to shatter a glass panel to free the boy, said to him: ‘You won a prize — which one do you want?’

​I love you.
Daniel

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This issue was produced while listening to Amour Plastique by Videoclub, Adèle Castillon, and Mattyeux. 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.