🧪 Cyanide Ice Cream

Following a global search for the most promising startups at the intersection of Food and Health, it’s time to introduce the 36 Semi Finalists of the FoodTech World Cup.

Representing 20 countries, these rising stars will now pitch in Regional Demo Day Semi Finals with VCs and Corporates.

From fortifying healthy fats with dietary fibers to tackling malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and harnessing bioactives for better metabolism, this lineup is bursting with worldwide talents.

Discover the Semi Finalists:

Next up: The Finalists will join us in Lausanne on May 15th to showcase their groundbreaking solutions in personalised nutrition, glucose management, longevity, gut health, and immunity.

Head this way to get to know the Semi Finalists. And here to get your HackSummit pass and sit in on the Grand Final.

This week in FoodTech:

🔒 Plant-based seafood startup shuts down
💡 Do second time founders have the edge?
🐭 Cultivated mouse meat approved for pets

The Digest

📈 What’s up? A new study has found that grass-fed beef is not environmentally friendly and may be up to 40 times more carbon intensive than other proteins.

💰 Also up. President Trump announced a 10% tariff on all US imports starting 5th April, sparking food industry concerns about rising manufacturing costs and grocery prices.

📉 What’s down? Vertical farming startup Plenty has filed for bankruptcy. It was last valued at $1.9 billion during its last funding round in 2022.

🔒 Also down. French plant-based seafood startup OLALA! has shut down after three years, citing low turnover and limited market demand.

🌱 The EU Commission has committed to developing a protein diversification strategy to boost plant protein production and reduce reliance on imports, though parliamentarians are calling for clearer actions and timelines.

🇨🇳 At its annual Two Sessions summit, China’s government called for accelerating the development of its alternative protein industry through enhanced biotech capacity, regulatory frameworks, IP protection, and workforce upskilling.

🍝 Amusing: Monzo founder Tom Blomfield created an AI recipe generator called Recipe Ninja as a side project, which quickly drew quirky user prompts like "Snot Pasta" and "Cyanide Ice Cream," highlighting both AI’s rapid progress and its unpredictable use.

🍫 Quick overview: Who owns the chocolate - mapped.

Fundraising

🧑‍🍳 San Francisco-based Chef Robotics raised $43.1 million in a Series A round, bringing its total funding to over $65 million, to accelerate the rollout of its AI-powered food assembly robots designed to work across a range of food production tasks.

• This week, Hack published a list of top 40 Robotics startups to watch, including Chef Robotics. Take a look.

🪨 Eion secured a $33 million offtake deal with Frontier to remove nearly 79,000 tons of CO2 via enhanced rock weathering on US farmland using its patented olivine-based process and soil fingerprinting technology.

🧫 Israeli cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms raised $29 million—with an additional $10–15 million expected soon—to scale production and launch its first whole-cut product using a more efficient, lower-cost process.

🥓 Ecovative secured $11 million to scale production of its mycelium-based MyBacon, expand into foodservice, and accelerate development of whole-cut mycelium products using its proprietary AirMycelium technology.

🇮🇱 Israeli startup Brevel raised an additional $5 million in a seed extension round—bringing the total to $25 million—to advance its microalgae-based ingredient production for alternative proteins.

👀 Good Read: Food Navigator explains why food tech investment is projected to rebound to nearly €23 billion within the next year, following a 70% decline since 2021.

👉 Catch up on all 11 funding rounds from this week including £1.4 million for a new innovation hub and a Virtual Scale-up Platform to reduce the cost of biomanufacturing.

New Partnerships

🍫 Koa is partnering with Altinmarka to launch Cacaonly, a sustainable product line sweetened with upcycled cocoa fruit pulp, aiming to replace refined sugar in chocolate and beverages while supporting over 5,000 small-scale farmers in Ghana.

🤝 UK-based Hoxton Farms is joining forces with Japan’s Sumitomo Corporation to bring its cultivated pork fat to Asia-Pacific markets, aiming to integrate the ingredient into a range of food products while securing regulatory approvals and future proofing the region’s pork supply.

📈 Indian cultivated meat startup ClearMeat is joining forces with NIFTEM-K to advance biotech and foodtech innovation in the country through a government-supported collaboration.

🌾 Walmart is partnering with AI agritech firm Cropin to improve its fresh produce forecasting, crop health monitoring, and seasonal predictions, in a move designed to enhance its sourcing strategies across the US and South America.

🇧🇷 Carrefour Brazil has partnered with vegan brand Vida Veg to launch cashew-based cheeses under its private label.

New in Startups

🐶 BioCraft Pet Nutrition received approval from Austrian authorities to sell its cultivated mouse meat ingredient for pet food across the EU, enabling partnerships with European manufacturers as it expands production capacity at its Vienna-based lab.

🌾 US startup Tensorfield Agriculture is commercialising a high-speed, energy-efficient thermal micro-jetting system that uses superheated vegetable oil to precisely kill weeds in speciality crops, offering a lighter, faster, and more cost-effective alternative to laser weeding and herbicides.

🐓 Food recycling startup Mill launched a new "Mill for Workplace" product line, expanding its service—which turns household food scraps into nutrient-rich chicken feed via a home recycling bin and subscription model—into offices to help businesses reduce food waste and meet sustainability goals.

🇫🇷 French startup Bon Vivant has rebranded to Verley, and unveiled what it says are the ‘world’s first’ functionalised recombinant dairy proteins.

🍳 Bridge Appliances deployed its automated egg-cooking robot, OMM, at Beantrust Coffeebar in Massachusetts—its first commercial customer.

👍️ Good Read: For all those who’ve wondered what cultivated meat actually tastes like, Green Queen shares all.

Plant Based

🐟️ Austria’s Revo Foods launched EL BLANCO, a 3D-extruded mycoprotein and microalgae oil-based alternative to black cod, featuring a realistic flaky texture and rich omega-3 content.

🌾 Australian Plant Proteins has been acquired by My Co., the Paule Family Office’s investment arm, in a strategic move to revive the company, support local agriculture, and strengthen Australia's position in the global plant-based protein market.

🛒 French retailer E.Leclerc launched Végé, a new plant-based sub-brand under its Marque Repère label, offering around 45 affordable products priced competitively with animal-based equivalents.

🍄 Chinese startup CellX self-declared its first-of-a-kind morel mushroom mycelium ingredient as safe in the US and launched high-protein jerky snacks under the new brand Mourish, with plans to expand into retail and B2B partnerships.

Big Food

👑 King Charles III’s Sustainable Markets Initiative launched “Routes to Regen”, a regenerative farming pilot in the UK with McCain Foods, McDonald’s, Waitrose & Partners, and major banks, aiming to support farmers with financial, technical, and peer-to-peer resources to accelerate the transition to sustainable agriculture.

🛍️ Greencore has acquired Bakkavor for £1.2 billion, forming a UK convenience food powerhouse with nearly £4 billion in combined revenue and plans to boost efficiency, innovation, and market competitiveness.

🍓 Pepsi launched a new campaign called ‘The Sweetest’, using AI to measure how sweet things are—both in taste and feeling—to promote its new zero sugar Strawberries ‘N’ Cream and Cream Soda drinks.

☀️ Lion NZ has installed one of New Zealand’s largest rooftop solar arrays at its East Tamaki brewery, generating 14.4% of the site’s electricity as part of its commitment to decarbonisation.

From the Community

Get hired in FoodTech

• Cultimate (Germany) are hiring a Bioprocess Engineer

• DTU (Denmark) are looking for a Sr Fermentation Specialist

• Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada is looking for a Fermentation Specialist

• Yeo Valley are looking for a Senior Innovation Chef

• Nourish Ventures (Singapore) are looking for interns

👋 Join us at a FoodHack Meetup in Tel Aviv, Milan, New York. Sign up here.

🙌 A peek inside the FoodHack Lisbon Meetup.

🚀 Eatable Adventures launches Raíces, an acceleration program for Agrifoodtech startups in Spain and Latin America. Apply here.

🎧 Join Tälist for a webinar on April 8th to explore how AI is revolutionizing the hiring process. Register here for free.

💡 Do second time founders have the edge? Have your say.

👀 Good read: The illusion of precision in agriculture?

🍝 Fool proof? A FoodTech April Fool

😵‍💫 Just for fun: Know the feeling?

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Until next time - Stay Hungry