FoodTech Weekly #239 by Daniel S. Ruben

Hi there,

Thanks to all of you who reached out after my little plug for THE HEAT last week. I’m future food curator for this amazing climate festival, and I’m looking for startups interested in exhibiting — ideally those with a tangible potential climate impact. Think alt protein, food waste reduction, methane reduction, alt ingredients (cocoa, coffee, etc), sustainable packaging, regenerative agriculture — you get the idea.

There’s going to be 800 people for THE HEAT at Harwell Science Campus (Oxford, U.K.) - founders, investors, corporates, journalists, government and research agencies etc — joining workshops, product demos, musical performances, art installations, 10-minute talks, and much more.

Any startup that offers substantial quantities of food samples may be able receive complimentary event tickets, plus a free startup booth/stand. Get in touch!

(If you just want to attend, use DANIELFRIEND for a 20% ticket discount).

This week's rundown:

💵 $29M in fresh funding for cultivated meat trailblazer
🪦 Vertical farming company which had raised $1B goes bankrupt
🌾 Why Japan has a rice shortage

Let's go!

💬 Conversation with Stefan Olsson of Stacky’s

"What we realized back in 2021 was that a whole industry was stuck in trying to imitate meat and other produce. Why? [...] We’re trying to tackle the problem of getting the other +90% of the population to eat more plant-based. And if we’re going to succeed in doing this we need to create easy-to-use, great tasting and healthy food, at a reasonable price."

Stefan Olsson is the serial entrepreneur who after a long career in media and online determined it was time to make a real impact, and decided to fix plant-based foods. This is how Stacky's was born. Read the full conversation here.

💰 Funding

🇮🇱 Cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms has closed a $29M funding round to expand production capacity, and has flagged it expects to raise another $10M-$15M in the coming months. Aleph Farms says it has achieved a 97% reduction in production costs since 2020, believing its production cost will be $14 per pound (appr. $31 per kg) at medium production scale, and plans to launch its cultivated beef products in Israel later this year.

🇳🇱 Protix has secured a €1M ($1.1M) loan from Invest International to explore building an insect production facility in South Korea.

🇮🇹 HypeSound has scored €1.2M ($1.3M) in a preseed round led by Eatable Adventures and joined by e.g. CDP Venture Capital, Nextup, and Vento Ventures. The company uses a novel acoustic modulation system to speed up microbial growth, making bioproduction more efficient, sustainable, and scalable.

🇳🇴 Catchwise, which uses AI and satellite data to optimize the fuel efficiency of fishing operations (cutting fuel consumption by up to 50%), has reeled in €1.25M ($1.35M) in preseed funding from e.g. Dreamcraft Ventures, Sondo, and Ocean Impact.

🇮🇱 Microalgae company Brevel has expanded its Seed with another $5M, bringing it to $25M in total. The company grows microalgae proteins for various food and beverage applications.

🇩🇪 Differential Bio has emerged from stealth with a €2M preseed investment led by Ananda Impact Ventures and Regen Ventures. The company integrates AI, advanced microbiology, and kab automation to eliminate bottlenecks in biomanufacturing, especially when scaling bioprocesses from lab to industrial levels.

🇩🇪 Formo has bagged a $1M grant from the German government (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung), and will partner with BRAIN Biotech AG to advance dairy and egg protein development.

🧐 Noteworthy

⚰️ Vertical farming company Plenty has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Plenty, which had raised almost $1B, says it plans to continue to operate a strawberry farm in Virginia plus an R&D center.

😵 French plant-based seafood startup OLALA! is shutting down due to weak revenue and inability to find product/market fit.

✅ BioCraft has received (as likely the first company ever) EU approval to sell its cell-cultivated mouse ingredient to pet food companies. As part of the process, the startup had to show that e.g. its product is using non-GMO animal cells, is free from pathogens, and has a comparable nutrient profile to conventional meat slurry.

🐑 Having sheep graze grass on solar farms is being touted as an environmentally friendly solution. But do these ecological benefits outweigh the methane emissions?

🐷 Slovenian plant-based brand Juicy Marbles just launched Pork-ish, a plant-based whole cut pork with Nutri-Score A.

🧈 California startup Savor has unveiled a new 'butter’ made without cows, plants, or microbes. The company has developed prototypes that replicate the functional properties of e.g. milkfat, cocoa butter, lard, beef tallow, and liquid vegetable oils.

🤑 Bread and Butter Ventures closed its Fund IV at $40M, and will continue to invest in Seed stage FoodTech, digital health, and enterprise SaaS startups.

☠️ ‘Our toxic relationship with herbicides.’

🐛 Why insect poop is gaining interest as fertilizer.

🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community

👨🏻‍💻 Foreverland (🇮🇹) is hiring a New Product Development Manager.

🧀 ProVeg Incubator has teamed up with Lidl to launch the Cheese Alternative Innovation Competition, which calls on startups to submit their innovations in the alt cheese space. Winners will get their products on select Lidl stores in Germany, and more. Apply by April 27, 2025.

🎤 HackSummit returns to Lausanne (🇨🇭) on May 15-16, bringing together top Climate Builders, Investors, Scientists, and Operators to double down on Climate Deep Tech. Across two action-packed days, expect game-changing talks, rapid-fire pitches, hands-on workshops, and city-wide side events to accelerate investment into impact. Save 20% with discount code FOODTECHWEEKLY when you book your place.

👉 ICYMI, Forward Fooding recently launched FoodTech500, ‘the Fortune 500’ of FoodTech.

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

🎲 Random Stuff

🚨 A Cheeto resembling a famous Pokémon was just sold for almost $90K (😳). Speaking about these pocket monsters, Pikachu was last seen escaping riot police in Istanbul.

🍚 Japan has a rice shortage, forcing supermarkets to implement buying limits; the government has had to tap into its emergency stockpile in a bid to drive down prices.

💡The world came to a standstill during COVID. But this also gave scientists an opportunity to learn more about human behavior. Here’s 15 lessons they learnt, including e.g. that high heels are dangerous, that men don’t do more housework even when stuck at home, that dolphins talk more when humans are not around — and that there’s no substitute for human contact.

🪓 How trees can call the police if they’re at risk of being cut down (h/t ClimateHack).

🐟 ‘The world’s ugliest animal’ — the smooth-headed blobfish — was just crowned fish of the year in New Zealand.

​I love you.
Daniel

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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Voyage voyage by Desireless.
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Disclosures: I'm founder of Solvable Syndicate. I’m an operating advisor to VC/investment firms Nordic FoodTech VC and Mudcake. I'm a mentor at accelerators Katapult Ocean, Big Idea Ventures, and Norrsken Accelerator. I'm an advisor to HackGroup, Hooked, Ignitia, Improvin, IRRIOT, Juicy Marbles, NitroCapt, Oceanium, petgood, 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.