🌾 AI for Abundant Agriculture

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5 years ago, Arnaud Delacour was selling luxury cosmetics at an airport.
Today, he’s helping the food industry swap eggs for chickpeas.

What started with kitchen prototypes, chef trials, and early experiments in alternative proteins became The Very Food Co, replacing egg and dairy in culinary applications.

His journey was far from straightforward: failed launches, pivots, and persistence shaped the journey (his latest post tells all).

But despite the odds, this week they launched Very Aquafaba Powder, a stable, lightweight chickpea water-based egg white alternative designed for industrial and bakery use. To give the food system a makeover that matters.

This week in FoodTech:

💰 €55 million AgriFoodTech fund just launched
🍫 Choc-grade cocoa butter via plant cell culture
🚜 €90 million for High Precision spraying AgTech

The Digest

🔝 Who made DigitalFoodLab's European AgriFoodTech Top 50?

📝 California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed the “Real Foods, Healthy Kids Act” into law, making California the first US state to define and phase out ultra-processed foods from K–12 public schools over the next decade.

🧫 The Good Food Institute acquired eight bovine cell lines and two serum-free media formulations from defunct startup SciFi Foods and partnered with Tufts University to make them publicly available through an open-access cell bank.

✍️ Denmark’s Technical Institute and North Carolina State University have signed an MOU to develop innovative biosolutions and functional foods through advanced fermentation and bioprocessing technologies.

🇰🇷 The Good Food Institute Asia Pacific signed an MOU with South Korea’s World FoodTech Council to accelerate alternative protein innovation by strengthening R&D, advancing regulatory frameworks, and developing scientific talent to position K-FoodTech as a global leader in sustainable food technology.

6️⃣ These 6 trends are driving the future of AgTech, says AgTechNavigator.

New in Funding

🤖 Swiss agtech scale-up Ecorobotix, a pioneer in AI-powered Ultra-High Precision spraying for sustainable agriculture, secured €90 million in a Series D round led by Highland Europe with The European Circular Bioeconomy Fund and McWin Capital Partners, bringing its total funding to €128 million.

🧬 Wild Bioscience, a University of Oxford spinout, raised $60 million in a Series A funding round led by the Ellison Institute of Technology to advance its AI-driven crop breeding platform, which identifies genetic improvements to create higher-yield, climate-resilient, and more sustainable crop varieties.

💸 Italy’s Maia Ventures launched its first €55 million AgriFoodTech fund, backed by the European Investment Fund, CDP Venture Capital, and major Italian food corporates like Cereal Docks and Andriani, to invest €500,000–1.5 million in 20–25 early-stage startups focused on innovations at the intersection of food, health, and sustainability.

🍦 California-based Alec’s Ice Cream, which makes organic regenerative A2 ice cream, raised $11 million in a Series A funding round led by Imaginary Ventures, to expand its Culture Cup line, scale manufacturing, grow its team, and strengthen regenerative supply chains.

🌀 US startup Tender Food has rebranded as Lasso, expanding beyond plant-based meat to develop clean-label, fibre-spun ingredients using its proprietary SpinTech technology, and secured $6.5 million in a funding round led by Rhapsody Venture Partners to commercialise its platform for healthier, additive-free food production.

💶 EIT Food awarded €600,000 to 18 agrifoodtech startups across Europe at Next Bite 2025, including Agreenet, which develops sustainable crop monitoring solutions, and Biomyc, which creates mycelium-based packaging.

New in Startups

🍫 Israel’s Celleste Bio unveiled the first chocolate-grade cocoa butter made via plant cell culture technology.

🦆 French cultivated food tech company Gourmey has acquired Vital Meat to form a new entity, PARIMA, which will produce scalable, next-generation cell-based animal products across multiple species, starting with cultivated duck and chicken.

🧫 US startup Alpine Bio has expanded its soybean-based molecular farming platform to produce lactoferrin with 3.5× higher iron content than bovine sources and developed a highly soluble, non-GMO soy protein isolate with whey-like functionality.

🐾 UK startup The Pack has partnered with Germany’s MicroHarvest to launch Gut Bites, the UK’s first vegan, vet-formulated dog treats made with microbial protein - a hypoallergenic, gut-friendly, and sustainable product.

🍄 Australia’s Fable Food Co launched its blended beef-and-shiitake mushroom range at Central Market stores in Texas, offering a more sustainable, health-conscious alternative for meat lovers in the US’s largest beef-producing state.

🥚 French startup The Very Food Co unveiled Very Aquafaba Powder, a stable, lightweight chickpea water-based egg white alternative designed for industrial and bakery use.

Big Food

👩‍🌾 Lidl GB announced a £30 billion, five-year investment to strengthen the resilience, sustainability, and growth of British food and farming.

From the Community

🌿 Interesting: When soils degrade, the risks don’t stop at the farm gate. They ripple across entire economies, Tamma Carel unpacks the impacts.

👋 Sign up for the next FoodHack Meetups in Lisbon (Oct 23rd), Barcelona (Nov 4) and Boston (Oct 28th).

💡 Why the bioeconomy isn’t a fancy word for green business.

🎙️ Good listen: Thijs Bosch, CEO of the Protein Brewery shares how to get funded in 2025.

🗑️ Behind the idea of a smart bin startup to turn food scraps into dust.

🥒 Just for fun: Using cucumber sticks for A/B testing

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Until next time - Stay Hungry