🥄 Have your spoon and eat it

Food BioTech is growing up.

This week, Verley -  the precision fermentation company formerly known as Bon Vivant and a former FoodTech World Cup finalist -  landed a chunky €32 million Series A to push its animal-free whey toward full commercial scale.

The news drops as the sector shifts from promise to proof. Less about what could work, more about who can actually scale.

As Verley’s Hélène Briand told us: “Food BioTech is moving beyond proof of concept toward scalable, regulated solutions that deliver real nutritional and environmental value.”

It’s also the theme of this year’s FoodTech World Cup (applications close next Friday 👀), the direction of travel feels pretty clear. Onwards.

This week in FoodTech:

🥜 Commercialising lab-grown fruit and nuts
📊 AI digital twins target sugar beet emissions
🤖 Springhouse tracks your fridge (and your waste)

The Digest

🤑 Foodrise reports that EU CAP subsidies heavily favour animal agriculture, with beef and lamb receiving 580 times more funding than legumes in 2020.

👨🏻‍🌾 Philippine agritech platform Mayani, in partnership with Australia’s Hillridge Technology and funded by the UK FCDO’s Frontier Tech Hub, is piloting a “Dual-Resilience” model that combines market offtake and parametric insurance to protect climate-vulnerable smallholder fisherfolk by stabilising incomes and enabling faster payouts during extreme weather.

💀 Tough read: The autopsy of the Agrifood Climate Tech Collapse

❓Interesting: Arun Luthra at Amerging Biotechnologies lays out the differences between fermenters and bioreactors. 

⭐️ Good listen: Bodil Sidén at Kost Capital explains why she is exclusively investing in the "Inputs" (the ingredients and enabling tech), instead of betting on the "Outputs" (the final consumer product).

🎟️ Get your HackSummit pass and join us for 1 or 2 days of high-impact networking, dealmaking and fun this April 22-23. Tip: First Side Events are already live.

Latest Funding

🇫🇷 French startup Verley raised €32 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round led by Alven with participation from Blast, Bpifrance, Sofinnova, Sparkfood, Captech and Founders Future to scale production and commercialise its precision-fermented, cow-free whey proteins in the US.

🍝 Melbourne-based restaurant app EatClub secured $27 million Series B funding, in a round led by Marbruck with support from EVP and Co:Act, to expand internationally by scaling its dynamic pricing platform that helps restaurants fill empty tables with time-sensitive discounts.

💻 German AI foodtech startup Foodforecast raised €8 million in a Series A funding round co-led by SHIFT Invest and ECBF to scale its AI forecasting platform that helps ultra-fresh food businesses reduce waste and optimise production. 

🤖 Norway’s Kilter secured €6.5 million in new financing, including a strategic investment from Japan’s Kubota Corporation alongside SBG Invest, Pymwymic, Nufarm, Halden Pensjonskasse, ProAgInvest and Natural Ventures, to scale its AI-powered autonomous precision weeding robots.

♻️ Copenhagen-based Reduced raised €4 million Series A funding in a round led by Delphinus Venture Capital with participation from Novo Holdings, ECBF and EIFO to scale industrial production and expand global partnerships for its fermentation-derived, upcycled savoury flavour enhancers.

🤠 Dutch precision fermentation company Those Vegan Cowboys raised €2.5 million from over 600 new shareholders ahead of its crowdfunding launch to accelerate development and testing of its animal-free casein and cheese products.

🌿 Grodi, based in Spain, secured €2.5 million in a funding round led by Swanlaab Innvierte Agri FoodTech with participation from Axon Desarrollo Andalucía and Innvierte to industrialise and scale deployment of its VEGA 11 autonomous computer-vision greenhouse robot.

🍒 New Zealand cellular horticulture startup Forever Harvest secured NZ$1.2 million pre-seed funding in a round led by Sprout Agritech, with support from the Bioeconomy Science Institute and Callaghan Innovation’s Deep Tech Incubator, to accelerate development, pilot production and commercialisation of its lab-grown fruit and nut ingredients.

🍫 Home Chocolate surpassed €10,000 in under 24 hours from 37 backers on Kickstarter for its Chocolatier Pro, validating early demand and supporting the continued rollout of its at-home chocolate-making machine.

New in Startups

🇺🇸 Dutch precision fermentation startup Vivici has launched its animal-free lactoferrin ingredient, Vivitein LF, in the US following self-affirmed GRAS status to expand access to high-value functional nutrition proteins and support scale-up and commercial adoption across health and wellness applications.

👩🏻‍🌾 France-based MyEasyAI, backed by URCA’s LICIIS lab and Cristal Union with €1.6 million in EU and Grand Est funding, is developing an AI-powered decision-support platform to help sugar beet farmers cut emissions and optimise water use through reliable farm data and digital twin technology.

🥄 UK-based startup eddys launched its first edible spoon, made from a blend of five grains and seeds, debuting exclusively with The After School Cookie Club to reduce single-use cutlery waste.

🥚 US brand Healthier Comforts has launched an animal-free egg white protein powder made entirely with The Every Company’s precision-fermented OvoPro.

🦐 Mexican high-tech shrimp farming startup Atarraya is partnering with UAE food security firm Silal to pilot its low-cost, biofloc-based shrimp production system as part of an asset-light global expansion strategy, with potential for large-scale deployment across the MENA region.

🤖 US startup Springhouse is developing an AI-powered kitchen intelligence platform that tracks household food inventory via computer vision, voice and receipts to generate personalised meal plans and help reduce food waste and duplicate grocery purchases.

📝 A growing list of 27 startups who are future-proofing your favourite foods. Have your say.

Plant-Based

💊 Researchers at Germany’s University of Hohenheim, in collaboration with KU Leuven, have launched the VegVit project to develop fermentation processes using Propionibacterium freudenreichii to naturally enrich plant-based meat and cheese alternatives with highly bioavailable vitamin B12.

🌱 Berlin’s Michelin-starred Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro has become the world’s sixth fully vegan Michelin-starred restaurant after removing dairy and eggs from its brunch menu.

🇨🇳 China’s CFNA has introduced the country’s first national plant-based food group standard to improve product quality, labelling clarity and industry competitiveness.

🇫🇮 And Helsinki’s City Council has voted to cut municipal meat and dairy procurement by 50% by 2030, replacing it with plant-based options across public institutions to advance climate goals, public health and food system change.

Big Food

🍫 Belgian confectionery giant Puratos is set to launch a cell-based chocolate product for professionals in the US this year, leveraging its partnership with California Cultured to commercialise cultured cocoa.

🏭 Ingredients giant Döhler has begun commercial production in Europe of Superbrewed Food’s high-protein postbiotic ingredient SB1.

💵 PepsiCo and the National Geographic Society have awarded five new Food for Tomorrow grants to researchers worldwide to advance and scale practical regenerative agriculture solutions for key crops through on-farm trials combining science, AI and nature-based practices.

🍪 PepsiCo Foods launched its first creator-led product line, Flavor Swap, partnering with Madison Beer, iShowSpeed and Dude Perfect to drive Gen Z engagement via TikTok Shop and social platforms by remixing its snack brands into new flavour mashups.

From the Community

• Opalia is looking for two new lab technicians in cell culture for its cultivated dairy business.

• Farmless is building post-agricultural protein infrastructure, and is seeking a Fermentation Engineer.

• FoodTech Experts is making space for experienced agrifood professionals looking for advisory or freelance projects.

• KITRO is hiring a Sales Development Representative for the DACH region, to help professional kitchens save thousands of kilos of food per year.

• Fancy doing a PhD in Barley Genetics? A fully funded project is now open through the CIC-START Industrial Doctoral Training Programme at the University of Dundee in partnership with the James Hutton Institute.

🇺🇸 The next FoodHack Meetup takes place in Boston. Save the date: 4th March.

🏆 The Alimentaria FoodTech Open Innovation Challenge 2026 is officially open, and it's a real opportunity to get in front of corporate decision-makers actively looking for solutions like yours. Take part here.

🇵🇹 Become a FoodHack Ambassador in Lisbon to host Meetups across the city and grow the local FoodTech community.

🍫 Applications are now open for Colab Tech 2026 with Mondelez International. Apply today.

🍯 Big Food vs Big Honey

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Until next time - Stay Hungry