1 - 7 October, 2022
Weekly Roundup: Stay up to date with the most recent Agrifood Tech news, investments and partnerships
IPOs, M&As & Investments:
Seed gene editing startup Inari has closed a $124 million Series E round bumping its valuation to $1.5 billion. The company will use the new funding to scale up product development on the road to commercialization.
Parisian cultivated meat startup Gourmey has raised €48m in new funding in the largest Series A round for a company in the sector, according to Dealroom. The monies will be used to build a production facility in Paris, which is set to be Europe’s largest cultivated meat production site.
Canada’s vertical farming company Elevate Farms raised C$26 million through a series of investments worldwide.
California-based Stellar Pizza, a company that makes trucks equipped with robotic pizza makers, has raised $16.5 million in a funding round backed by Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners.
Indian F2C company Deep Rooted has announced that it has raised USD 12.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by IvyCap Ventures with participation from existing investors including Accel, Omnivore, and Mayfield.
India’s agritech supply chain platform Falca raised 3M in a pre-series A round led by Inflection Point Ventures and others. Funds raised will be used in scaling the services to enter new markets, team expansion, and building a solid tech platform.
Led by Khosla Ventures, food tech startup Equii has closed a $6 million seed funding round for its proprietary microbial protein-based bread.
Polish food waste startup Foodsi has raised €1.24 million in a seed round. The fresh capital will be used to increase its nationwide reach and prepare its processes and mobile app for international expansion.
Icelandic green tech startup GreenBytes has announced a $1M pre-seed round led by Crowberry Capital. The team plans to use the newly acquired capital to expand and develop the GreenBytes product further.
Greece alt protein startup Plan(e)t Foods has raised €400K in its first funding round led by Greek angel investors for its first vegan and carbon-negative ice cream.
South Australian agtech startup Optomni, has raised $200,000 in a Seed round led by Skalata Ventures to optimise the fresh food supply chain.
Singapore-based capital firm Velocity Ventures has invested in Hyper Food Robotics to roll out autonomous robotic pizza kitchens next year.
UK hemp milk producer Gaia’s Farming Co. has raised £500,000 in seed funding. The company will use the capital to continue building and innovating in the hemp space and expand its team.
Funds, Grants & Partnerships:
The Rockefeller Foundation announced more than $10 million in funding and collaborative efforts to galvanize shifts in public and private procurement dollars to support a better food system through the purchase of more environmentally sustainable and locally sourced food.
Nestlé's NESCAFÉ outlined its extensive plan to help make coffee farming more sustainable by helping farmers transition to regenerative agriculture while accelerating its decade of work under the NESCAFÉ Plan 2030.
Daily Harvest, the company on a mission to make it easier to eat more sustainably-grown fruits and vegetables, announced the first round of grants in partnership with American Farmland Trust (AFT) and California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF).
Norway’s Minister of International Development Anne Beathe Tvinnereim announced NOK 100 million (US$9.5 million) in new funding for the African Development Bank’s (AFDB) Africa Emergency Food Production Facility
A research team at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa will lead a $40 million grant project to help underserved producers throughout the islands.
News & Trends:
Food systems require urgent and profound transformation to become sustainable, both in Europe and worldwide. Social innovation plays a pivotal role in transforming today’s food systems into ones that are economically and socially feasible, and sustainable within planetary boundaries.
Exotic Australian alternative protein company Vow has opened what it says is the largest cultivated meat facility in the southern hemisphere, in Alexandria in Sydney. Vow plans to launch a yet-to-be-named cultivated meat product in Singapore by the end of the year.
Singapore-based cultivated seafood startup Umami Meats announces it has filed a patent for a game-changing single-stem cell technology towards achieving price parity.
Pea protein producer Puris Holdings launches its first plant-based egg brand that will more closely connect it to a different audience: the consumer.
Deliveroo opens its very first physical grocery store in London in partnership with Morrisons supermarket. The new ‘Deliveroo HOP’ store will not only allow customers to pick up food they’ve ordered from the app, but shop for groceries in-store via digital kiosks.
Israel-based startup BioBetter believes that by turning tobacco plants into “natural bioreactors” they can bring down the cost of growth factors for cultivated meat — from the normal range of $50,000 – $500,000 per gram to a mere one dollar per gram.
Brazilian meatpacker JBS is closing its U.S. plant-based foods business, Planterra Foods, after about two years. The closure signals increasing troubles in the plant-based protein sector, where U.S. sales are flattening.
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