- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #226 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #226 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
December 13, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
FoodTech Weekly #226
Hi there,
I’ve been in NYC this week for HackSummit (flight emissions offset via Trine). Hundreds of founders and investors in climate and food convened to learn, discuss, collaborate, and network. As always with Hack, it was well-curated, food options were plant-centric and fantastic, and there was a strong sustainability focus throughout. And there was an abundance of new and old friends to engage with and be inspired by.
I joined a panel on Funding the Future of a Climate Positive Food Supply together with Laura Shulman (moderator, Food Future Strategies), Luba Safran, (Mondelēz SnackFutures Ventures), Michal Beressi Golomb (Celleste Bio), and Shayna Harris, (Supply Change Capital), where we covered everything from the future of cocoa, to the sectors getting the most attention right now in food, to how startups should think about funding their growth journeys.
In conversations with top founders and investors over the two summit days, I noticed a much greater sense of humility compared to a few years ago — a recognition that changing the status quo is hard and takes time, and that we must be more thoughtful about how we use our resources and time. I saw celebrated entrepreneurs, known for raising tens of millions of dollars but struggling to hit their milestones, offering each other words of support or advice and even hugs, despite ostensibly being competitors.
This was the first-ever HackSummit in the U.S. and I hope it’ll happen more times because it’s a great event — and when smart, mission-driven people come together, magic happens.
HackSummit NYC
This week's rundown:
🍫 Planet A Foods and Celleste Bio scores big funding for next-gen chocolate
🐛 Kinsect secures €1M for tech to automate insect production
📵 How a cell phone ban helped cut school lunch food waste
Let's go!
💰 Funding
🇩🇪 Planet A Foods, which develops cocoa-free chocolate, has closed a $30M Series B round, co-led by Burda and ZINTINUS. In early 2022, I interviewed Planet A Foods’ (then called QOA) co-founder Dr. Sara Marquart for The Appetizer podcast.
🇮🇱 In related news, cell-cultured cocoa startup Celleste Bio raised $4.5M in a round led by Supply Change Capital and joined by Mondelēz International’s SnackFutures Ventures, Consensus Business Group, The Trendlines Group, Barrel Ventures and Regba Agriculture. Celleste Bio says it can create 1 ton of cocoa butter from a single cocoa pod.
🇺🇸 One Bio, a spinoff from UC Davis, has drummed up a $27M Series A round, led by AlphaEdison and joined by e.g. Leaps by Bayer, DSM, Acre, and Mitsui E12. The company has developed a proprietary technology that can turn ag waste into odorless, colorless, and tasteless fibers, that can be added into products in “meaningful amounts” at levels previously out of reach because the fiber content made the end product unpalatable.
🇮🇱 Gavan Technologies has pulled in $8M in Series A funding. The company produces a plant-based fat that can act as e.g. a one-to-one replacement for butter in bakery products and dairy alternatives. The funding round was led by MoreVC, and joined by Lever VC, EIT Food, and DarkBoot Group.
🇮🇹 Kinsect, which develops tech to breed insects — specifically Black Soldier Fly — for use as sustainable proteins, has bagged €1M (appr. $1.06M) in funding, led by Farming Future and joined by e.g. Terra Next, Agrox, and Forest Valley.
Kinsect
🇳🇱 Orbisk, which builds AI-powered software solutions that helps professional kitchens manage their food waste, has taken in €8M (appr. $8.4M) in Series A funding, led by Regeneration.VC and PeakBridge and joined by e.g. Kost Capital, Doen Participaties, Brabant Development Agency and EIT Food.
🇨🇦 Cascadia Seaweed, which cultivates kelp as biostimulants and livestock feed, has raked in a CAD $4M (appr. $2.8M) in Series A from investors such as WWF Impact, Vere Ventures, Potato Impact Partners, Venture Lab Climate Impact Fund, Realize Impact, the Real Estate Foundation of British Columbia, and Norfolk Green Ventures.
🇵🇹 Biotech startup CarboCode which produces compounds present in breast milk but absent from infant formula milk has banked €15M (appr. $16M) in Series C led by Iberis Capital. The compounds are essential for brain function, controlling inflammation, and gut health.
🇦🇺 Fresho, which develops a platform that optimizes how fresh food moves from suppliers to restaurant kitchens, has announced a $17M Series B round.
🇺🇸 Rosy Soil has scooped up $3.6M in Seed funding from Climate Capital, Draper Associates, and Boost VC. The company works on creating a biochar-based soil additive from captured carbon emissions to improve soil health and plant growth.
Rosy Soil
🇳🇱 Farmless which uses an air-based fermentation process to produce proteins (with 5000x less land than beef) has been awarded a €1M (appr. $1.06M) grant from the European Regional Development Fund.
🇨🇱 Luyuf Biotechnologies, which develops tech to industrialize cultivated meat, has secured $1.25M in non-dilutive grants from the Chilean Economic Development Agency and the Good Food Institute.
🇺🇸 The EVERY Company, which uses precision fermentation to produce e.g. an egg white replacement, has landed a $2M grant from the Department of Defense.
🇨🇦 Insect farming startup Aspire Food Group has received ‘a meaningful amount of money’ in fresh funding.
🇪🇸 HEMAV has hauled in €8M (appr. $8.4M) led by Future Food Fund, PureTerra Ventures, and Inclimo. The startup offers a SaaS platform in 24 countries that supports agriculturalists in making smarter, data-driven decisions to optimize yields and grow food with fewer inputs.
Hemav
🎙️ Investment Climate
This week, Alex Shandrovsky spoke to Julien Lesage of Hubcycle. The company analyzes factory waste and then transforms that food waste into new ingredients. Hubcycle recently raised a €15M Series A. The episode is available on Spotify and Apple.
Top three findings from this conversation:
HubCycle’s use of a fundraising partner is uncommon but was pivotal due to their complex, non-SaaS business model “ So basically we had a fundraiser for this round because we have kind of a complex business. We are not like SaaS business, and at some point you have to make the playbook clear for VCs to understand how scalable the model is.”
Prioritized aligning with people who understood their business model. "When you work with the right people, you want to align interests. If we speak about the retainer, it's almost nothing compared to the rest.”
Open communication about potential risks and challenges with investors built trust. “ You're speaking with people that went through the same process as you are. We have always been very transparent. When we are receiving a challenge from the team or from auditors or anything, we're sharing mail. Without any translation or any hiding. That’s when you build confidence and trust.”
🧐 Noteworthy
🏜️ AgTech startup iyris is growing produce such as cucumber and tomatoes in harsh desert conditions in Saudi, aiming to strengthen local food security.
⏩ U.K. FoodTech startup Multus which works on affordable, animal-free media for cultivated meat has launched a product they say cuts R&D product development from 2+ years to about 9 months.
🔮 The biggest FoodTech trends for 2025 and beyond, according to Greenfood.
🐄 CH4 Global has partnered with ag solutions company UPL to distribute the former’s seaweed-based methane-reducing feed supplement to millions of cattle in India and South America,
🚜 The harvesting robot market is growing rapidly, driven by labor shortages and tech advancements, and is forecasted to hit $4.8B in revenue by 2032.
Source: The Mixing Bowl
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 UPSIDE Foods (🇺🇸) is hiring a Head of Sales.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🗑️ A Swedish high school banned cell phone use during school days, which had the unintended effect of reduced food waste; when students could no longer share (and make fun of) pictures of today’s school lunch, they started eating the lunch to a higher degree.
😮 Chilled drinkable mayo has been launched in Japan. I’m not convinced.
🏘️ Oosterwold, a Dutch suburb of Almere, requires its 5,000 residents to grow food on at least half of their property. It’s part of a wider experiment where residents have freedom (and responsibility) over the urban design process, incl. e.g. how they build their houses, figuring out street names, roads, schools, and waste management.
👻 Hook & Ladder 8 is an active NYC firehouse that has been in operation since 1903.
Who ya gonna call?
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Heaven’s In New York by Wyclef Jean.
🤳 Follow me on LinkedIn and X.
👉 Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.
✏️ Start your own Beehiiv newsletter.
📈 As of today, FoodTech Weekly has 3,012 subscribers, of which 54 are Premium. Please join them.