🍿 Corn-free Popcorn

This week we welcomed 11 Ambassadors to the ever-growing FoodHack family.

They are joining forces with existing teams or building on the foundations laid by former Ambassadors to grow and support their local FoodTech community in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Mexico City, Vienna and Wageningen.

Check out the full list of 80 FoodHack Ambassadors to see who’s building community in your city.

And join us next at a Meetup in Lisbon, Thessaloniki, Basel or Berlin.

This week in FoodTech:

🦠 120 Startups leveraging microbes in Food and Ag
🪰 €50M black soldier fly larvae facility goes bankrupt
🌭 18 times less saturated fat plant-based frankfurter

The Digest

📈 What’s up? An estimated 320 million pounds of food, representing 267 million lost meals and worth about $550 million, will go to waste this Thanksgiving, according to data ReFED.

📉 What’s down? Danish insect agriculture company ENORM has been declared bankrupt following a six-month court-supervised restructuring, ending operations at its €50 million black soldier fly larvae facility, once among Europe’s largest insect protein plants.

🦠 Exclusive: 120 startups leveraging microbes incl for food production, manufacturing, healthier soils and crop yield.

🌾 The Global Methane Hub has committed $30 million to launch the Rice Methane Innovation Accelerator, a programme supported by The Rockefeller Foundation to develop and scale technologies that reduce methane emissions from rice cultivation while maintaining yields and profitability for farmers in developing countries.

🇸🇬 Singapore has scrapped its ‘30 by 30’ food sovereignty plan, replacing it with a new four-pronged “Singapore Food Story 2” strategy focused on local protein and fibre production, import diversification, stockpiling and global partnerships, notably excluding cultivated meat from its updated food security goals.

🔬 Researchers developed edible composite hydrogel films made from curcumin, potato starch, κ-carrageenan, and PVA as potential scaffolds for cultivated meat production, offering a sustainable option for growing bovine muscle cells.

🍅 De-risking the global food supply chain. Planet A Ventures explains why price spikes are no longer anomalies, they're early signals of a deeper structural shift.

🎟️ Have you got your ticket for HackSummit in New York on December 10-11th?

New in Funding

🥚 San Francisco-based The Every Company secured $55 million Series D funding. The round was led by McWin Capital Partners, with participation from Main Sequence, Bloom8, TO.VC, Minerva Foods, Grosvenor Food & Ag, New Agrarian, SOSV, and others, and it will use the funds to expand manufacturing of its precision-fermented egg proteins and drive profitability following its nationwide Walmart rollout.

🇸🇬 The Singapore Food Agency has awarded $42 million to 11 projects advancing alternative proteins and food safety innovations, including research on AI-enhanced processing for sustainable proteins and non-animal testing methods for novel food safety.

💡 Dutch startup Source.ag raised €15.2 million in a Series B round led by Astanor, with participation from Enza Zaden and Harvest House. It will use the funds to scale its AI software for Controlled Environment Agriculture, which is currently powering 300 greenhouses across 18 countries.

🥩 Queensland-based Nbryo secured $10 million in a round co-led by Tenacious Ventures and AgriZeroNZ, with participation from Queensland Investment Corporation, the Murdoch family, and Mandalay Venture Partners to expand its bovine IVF platform, designed to ‘breed better beef’.

🗽 New York startup Oddball secured $2 million in a seed round led by Springdale Ventures to expand retail distribution, develop new products and launch its plant-based jelly snacks into three Whole Foods Market regions.

🐟 Atlantic Fish Co., based in the US, raised $1.2 million in a seed funding round led by Katapult Ocean, Alwyn Capital, DMV Capital, and the Georgetown Angel Investment Network, with additional support from the National Science Foundation. It will use the funds to scale its cultivated whitefish product and prepare for regulatory approval.

🍿 US-based Cob launched a corn-free, gluten-free popcorn alternative made from sorghum and raised a $5 million seed round led by Novak Djokovic, with participation from Bullish, Daxos, Furthermore, and Venrex, to bring its sustainable, nutrient-rich snack line to market.

New in Startups

🧫 Hoxton Farms has submitted a regulatory dossier to the Singapore Food Agency for its cultivated pork fat, marking its first step toward global approvals, with filings in the UK, North America, and other Asian markets set to follow soon.

🔬 New Wave Biotech launched a real-time Life Cycle Assessment tool integrated into its AI-powered biomanufacturing simulation platform, designed to enable companies to evaluate and optimise environmental impact, performance, and cost simultaneously.

🛰️ Dublin-based Proveye secured a European Space Agency contract to develop and deploy ProvVari, an AI-powered precision fertiliser platform that uses satellite and field data to optimise grassland productivity, cut costs and emissions, and support EU climate and biodiversity goals.

👎 Colorado-based Meati has laid off most of its staff, including its entire fermentation and food production teams, as new owner Meati Holdings struggles with financial difficulties, payroll delays and stalled operations following the company’s earlier insolvency and acquisition.

Plant Based

🧀 Miyoko Schinner, founder of plant-based dairy brand Miyoko’s, is assembling a team to bid to buy back the company after it entered an insolvency process in October 2025, following years of legal disputes and leadership changes.

🌭 Spain’s Heura launched a plant-based frankfurter made from soy protein, extra virgin olive oil and spices, offering 18 times less saturated fat, no cholesterol and nearly double the protein of traditional versions.

Big Food

📈 Interesting: The Wall Street Journal shared a striking chart comparing the S&P 500 to 5 of the largest global food companies - PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, The Campbell's Company, General Mills, and Conagra Brands - from 2023 to mid-2025. The S&P is up 80%. The five consumer co’s? Down double digits - some as much as 40%.

🍫 Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut has formed a long-term partnership with German startup Planet A Foods to develop and scale sustainable cocoa-free chocolate alternatives.

🏭 Angel Yeast has begun operations at its new yeast protein production line in Yichang, Hubei, with an annual capacity of 11,000 tons to produce AngeoPro, a high-purity sustainable protein alternative containing over 80% protein.

🧪 German chemical and biotech company WACKER unveiled FGF-2 Food, a bioengineered, animal-free growth factor produced via fermentation to support cell proliferation in cultivated meat production, designed to help manufacturers reduce costs, scale production, and eliminate the need for animal-derived media components.

🧑‍🌾 JBS USA is set to invest $1.1 million in climate-smart agriculture for New York farmers to settle a lawsuit from New York Attorney General Letitia James, which alleged the company misled consumers with its net-zero claims, and has agreed to reframe its 2040 net-zero target as an “ambition” rather than a firm commitment.

🧈 Tillamook County Creamery Association has partnered with Japan’s Kewpie to launch Butternaise, a limited-edition spread blending butter with mayonnaise and spices, created to enhance the flavour and texture of grilled cheese sandwiches.

From the Community

Get a job in FoodTech

• Tarwi Foods (Portugal) are recruiting for a Quality and Food Safety Expert

• The Nature Conservancy (USA) are looking for a Food & Water Director

• Systemiq (Netherlands) are recruiting an Associate

• Stocked (UK) are hiring for a Creative Strategist

• Meatly (UK) are looking for a Facility Manager

Are you hiring? Hit reply to be included next week.

👋 Sign up for the next FoodHack Meetups in Lisbon (Nov 11th), Thessaloniki (Nov 18th), Basel (Nov 18th) and Berlin (Dec 3rd).

🐾 Mathilde Do Chi asks: Have we lost the plot on cellular agriculture and pet food?

🏆 Magic Valley, Fermeate, and Terra Bioindustries are named the winners of the Bezos Centre for Sustainable Protein x Enterprise Singapore Sustainable Protein Startup Competition.

🍟 Just for fun: A genius…or?

Give us a thumbs up, or thumbs down in 10 seconds

I love it 😁 Meh 😐 I hate it 🙁

Until next time - Stay Hungry