💰 €80 million AgriFood fund

💰 Nordic Foodtech VC launched a new €80 million fund to support early and growth-stage startups in sustainable food innovation, with a specific focus on tackling food waste, alternative proteins, and healthier food solutions.

🌾 UC Davis spinout One Bio, whose proprietary technology is designed to convert agricultural waste into oligosaccharides that “bridge the fibre gap”, raised $27 million in a Series A funding round led by AlphaEdison.

🧬 Plant-and-soil health company Sound Agriculture raised a $25 million Series D extension to expand its flagship products, SOURCE and BLUEPRINT, into new markets while spinning out its advanced epigenetics platform for genetics innovation.

🍗 Chile-based Luyef Biotechnologies secured $12.5 million to scale its production of affordable cultivated meat. It will use the funds to focus on cost reduction and work towards commercialisation.

🏭 Swiss startup Yeastup raised $9.9 million Series A funding to repurpose a former dairy factory into a facility that upcycles 2,000 tonnes of spent brewer’s yeast annually into proteins and functional ingredients for food, nutraceuticals, and cosmetics.

Orbisk, a Dutch scale-up reducing food waste in hospitality, raised €8 million in a Series A round featuring Regeneration.VC to scale its AI-powered food waste monitor, which helps operators like hotels and restaurants cut food waste by 50% while improving sustainability and profitability.

🚜 Spanish startup HEMAV secured €8 million to expand its AI-driven agricultural platform LAYERS, designed to enable sustainable farming through precision insights that help reduce input costs by up to 30%, enhance logistics, and deliver highly accurate yield predictions.

🧈 Israel's Gavan raised $8 million Series A funding to launch a new European pilot facility for Fatrix, its plant protein-based fat that replaces butter in bakery and dairy alternatives, with operations set to begin in April 2025.

🇬🇧 London-based New Wave Biotech raised €1.2 million for its AI-powered bioprocess simulation platform, which optimises R&D in synthetic biology and alternative protein production to enable faster, more efficient scaling.

🥑 Bpacks raised €1 million seed funding for its bark-based packaging technology, which integrates into existing production systems, extends the shelf life of perishables by up to 7 days, and reduces food waste by over 42%.

☁️ Freya Cultivation Systems raised €500,000 seed funding for its flagship greenhouse product, The Aeroframe, a fog-based plant-growing system that doubles cultivation area using three-dimensional surfaces and triples grower profits by reducing per-plant costs.

💸 PepsiCo awarded ¡Ya Oaxaca!, a culinary brand specialising in artisanal Mexican sauces, the $100,000 grand prize from its 2024 Greenhouse Accelerator for its “impressive growth” and commitment to Hispanic flavors and sustainability.

🤖 Danish startup AgriRobot secured funding in a round led by Norminal Ventures and Tall Grass Ventures, bringing its total raised to over €2.5 million. It specialises in safety software for autonomous agricultural robots, and will use the funds to advance safer, more efficient autonomous operations.

💶 SevenVentures, the investment arm of ProSiebenSat.1, has made a media-for-equity investment in Swiss food tech Planted Foods, providing targeted advertising across its TV channels and streaming platform to boost brand awareness and growth in German-speaking markets.