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- FoodTech Weekly #240 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #240 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
April 04, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
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#240
Hi there,
I spoke to farmers in Sweden this week who said that planting season this year started a month earlier than usual. Y’all, is there something going on with the climate?
On that topic, I’ll be at climatetech event HackSummit in Lausanne (🇨🇭) May 15-16. As always, it’ll be a fantastic couple of days full of exciting speakers, networking, novel food (the entire official menu is plant-based), 30-second pitches, and city-wide events. I may or may not end up moderating (it wouldn’t be the first time)... Use FOODTECHWEEKLY for a 20% ticket discount.
What else? I wrote a little text about what Solvable Syndicate likes to invest in, and our decision-making process.
This week's rundown:
🐷 $11M for animal-free bacon
🤖 $43.1M for U.S. food robotics company
🍦 Breast milk-flavored ice cream was just launched
Let's go!
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💰 Funding
🇺🇸 GreenLight Bio has announced a $25M Series C round led by Just Climate. The company develops RNA-based crop protection technology, produced from natural materials. The targeted biocontrol stops pests while protecting crops, honeybees, and land. In related news, Vestaron which develops peptide-based sustainable bioinsecticides banked $20M in new funding.
🇺🇸 Ecovative has scored $11M from undisclosed existing investors and the Advance Albany County Alliance. The money will e.g. support the MyBacon product from MyForest Foods (spun out from Ecovative in 2020), currently sold in 1,200 stores including Whole Foods, Fairway Markets, and Fresh Direct.
🇸🇪 Vertical farming startup Green City Farming has bagged SEK 7.5M ($0.8M) in funding from existing actors, aiming for break-even before the summer. The company runs a 2,000 sq m. (21K sq. ft) indoor farm in Gothenburg.
🇳🇱 Grassa has harvested €3.6M ($4M). The Wageningen startup has developed a process of extracting excess protein from grass, for both livestock and human nutrition. For livestock, it helps cut methane emissions. Investors included Perspectieffonds Gelderland (PFG) managed by Oost NL, and existing shareholders Fransen Gerrits and Brightlands Venture Partners.
🇺🇸 Chef Robotics has secured $43.1M in Series A funding, led by Avataar Venture Partners and backed by e.g. HCVC, Siddhi Capital, and Bloomberg Beta. The company’s robots, which can pick and plate almost any ingredient, have produced over 44M servings in the U.S. and Canada.
Chef Robotics
🎙️ Investment Climate: How to get funded in 2025 with Govin Induchoodan of Glenntex
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Govin Induchoodan, Ph.D, Co-Founder and COO of Glenntex, a sustainable packaging startup spun out of academic research at Chalmers University of Technology. Govin shares how Sweden’s unique innovation ecosystem empowered him to retain ownership of his research, how he secured a SEK 7.2M pre-seed round led by Almi Invest and joined by PINC, and how Glenntex built early traction by partnering with customers to co-design the product. Packed with wisdom for researchers and founders alike, this conversation is a masterclass in turning science into startup success.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Deep Tech Founders Must Learn to Speak Commercial. One of Govin’s biggest challenges was translating scientific language into commercial value for both customers and investors. ‘ I think the biggest objection for me, I would say, is to not sound too scientific, yet, learn how to translate and communicate in the simplest, effective way possible, and still sound mature and deep tech. That has been the biggest hurdle to cross.‘
Customers Can Help You Design Your Product. Before raising funding, it is important to validate your tech by co-developing solutions with customers—treating them like design partners, not just buyers. ‘You don’t need to have a product. You need to have a customer design your product.’
Build a 5-Year Table to Reverse-Engineer Your Fundraise. Govin mapped out five years of company growth across areas like market, team, product, and customer, which helped him align investment asks with future milestones.
🧐 Noteworthy
📊 AgriFoodTech funding in Europe is back to 2020 levels, AgFunder News notes in this analysis.
📈 Will tariffs increase food waste? Some analysts say tariffs are a bit of supply chain disruption.
🗑️ A new estimate by nonprofit Oceana says Coca-Cola products alone will produce 1.3B pounds (600K metric tons) of plastic waste annually by 2030. Coke recently dropped its previous commitments to improve recycling and reduce plastics usage.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Are you a Nordic startup, VC, or institution? Join the Nordic Pavilion at SynBioBeta 2025 this May 5-8 in San Jose, California. Spaces are limited and going fast! Interested? Contact Fiona Mischel or Erin Kim.
😮 "In my almost three decades working with high-growth companies, I have lived through numerous industry bubbles (healthcare internet, internet, solar, biofuels, EVs, energy storage). Based on these experiences, I expect that over 70% of AgTech & FoodTech companies will either go bankrupt, cease operations, or be liquidated in a fire sale. It is likely that a similar percentage of the capital invested in these companies will never be recouped.’ Read Adam Bergman’s full forecast here.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🐧 Trump’s new trade tariffs hit the Heard and McDonald Islands (10% penalty each) off the coast of Australia. While both are uninhabited by people, they are home to a large population of penguins.
🧾 Someone examined all U.K. grocery items in 2024, finding that prices ending in 9 is a hangover from a generation or two ago — today the most popular is 0, followed by 5.
🍨 U.S. baby brand Frida has launched a Breast Milk Ice Cream. While not made with actual breastmilk, it has ‘the pitch perfect representation of the sweet, creamy, nutrient-packed goodness’ of breastmilk. (Note to self #1: It’s kinda strange that this feels weird, but eating cow breast milk ice cream doesn’t. Note to self #2: As the Product Developer at Frida, at what point were you sure that this product was ‘the perfect representation’ of breastmilk? How did you verify that flavor?)
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Age of Anxiety II (Rabbit Hole) by Arcade Fire.
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