🍗 MrBeast's culture(d) shock

The smart money is already placing its bets.

To get ahead of where capital is flowing next in AgriFood, we caught up with leading investors from Ordway Selections, Kost Capital, Nordic FoodTech VC, Big Idea Ventures, SOSV and more to uncover how they see the future of the food system unfolding in 2026.

From food as preventive healthcare and GLP-1–shaped nutrition, to regenerative agriculture, fermentation, plus - of course - AI, here’s what’s set to define the next chapter.

This week in FoodTech:

🥣 Scaling “invisible” oat fibre technology
🤖 A $500 AI sous-chef enters the kitchen
🇳🇱 Doubling down on meat and fossil fuel ads

The Digest

🏅 Forward Fooding revealed the FoodTech 500, featuring the latest advancements from international startup and scale-up companies throughout the entire supply chain.

🚫 Amsterdam has voted to ban outdoor advertising for meat and fossil fuel products across public spaces from May 2026, becoming the first capital city to do so as part of its strategy to cut emissions and shift diets toward more plant-based consumption.

🇰🇪 Good read: Can Kenya’s forgotten indigenous crops save the planet? 

🫣 Interesting: Oatly launched F*ck Oatly, a site “devoted” to helping fans and haters better understand everything that’s “wrong” with it. 

Latest Funding

🥛 UK sustainable grocery delivery firm Modern Milkman raised £10 million in a round led by Salica Investments to scale its app-driven, closed-loop doorstep delivery model, as it supplies reusable-packaged groceries from independent British producers to more than 100,000 households and expands internationally.

👶🏻 Buffalo-based FoodNerd raised $7.5 million in a seed funding round, led by Selva Ventures with participation from Spacestation Investments, S2 Venture Partners, Cistern Capital and strategic angels, to scale manufacturing and commercially launch its nutrient-dense, whole-food snacks for toddlers.

🐔 US startup Barnwell Bio secured $6 million seed funding in a round led by Twelve Below, with investors including Max Ventures, Dorm Room Fund, Banter Capital, Planeteer Capital, AgVentures Alliance, Daybreak Ventures and Alumni Ventures. It will use the funds to deploy metagenomic sequencing in poultry barns across the Midwest and Southeast, creating microbiome “fingerprints” that enable earlier detection of disease threats and more proactive flock health management.

🌾 Heritable Agriculture, an AI genomics startup spun out of Google X, received a $4.98 million grant from the Gates Foundation to build a cloud-based AI and multi-omics platform that accelerates the development of climate-resilient crops for smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries.

👩🏻‍🍳 London-based meal-prep marketplace HomeCooks raised €1.6 million from investors including PXN Ventures, Love Ventures and Speedinvest to bring chef-prepared home-cooked meals into supermarkets and new markets.

🇳🇱 Proba, based in the Netherlands, secured €1.25 million from backers including Future Food Fund and Yield Lab Europe. It will use the funds to scale its platform for certifying fertiliser-related Scope 3 emissions reductions in agri-food supply chains and expand operations into the US and Brazil.

💰 Growth equity firm SEMCAP raised $125 million for its inaugural Food & Nutrition fund from strategic investors including Fresh Del Monte, Farm Credit Canada and Securian Financial to back sustainable, high-growth food and nutrition companies across North America.

New in Startups

▶️ Cultivated meat got a major cultural boost as YouTube megastar MrBeast visited Upside Foods’ California facility, learned how cell-based chicken is made, and tasted it on camera.

🐟 North Carolina–based Atlantic Fish Co and Austria’s Revo Foods are collaborating to develop hybrid whole-cut seafood by combining cultivated whitefish cells with Revo’s mycoprotein-based 3D structuring platform.

🇮🇳 Swiss mycoprotein producer Planetary is in talks with India’s Dhampur Bio Organics to license its fermentation technology and co-locate production at sugar mills, aiming to make low-cost mycoprotein at industrial scale at below $1 per kilo.

🥣 US startup one.bio is launching its new GoodVice brand, showcasing its “invisible” oat fibre technology that allows 20g-plus of tasteless, soluble fiber to be added to foods and drinks without affecting texture.

👨🏻‍🍳 Gambit Robotics unveiled a $500 “AI sous chef” device that mounts above the stove and uses computer vision and thermal sensing to follow any recipe, track cooking in real time and guide users via voice and app.

🍫 Italy’s Foreverland is rolling out its cocoa-free chocolate ingredient Choruba® across Europe through partnerships with confectioners including Incom Leone, Walcor, Maxtris and Dulciar.

Big Food

🛒 CREMER Group launched FermBase, a new global one-stop shop for fermentation media, to provide startups and established companies with scalable feedstock sourcing and supply chain solutions to reduce costs, complexity and bottlenecks in next-generation and precision fermentation.

👋🏼 Amazon announced it is shutting its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, effectively abandoning its decade-long, cashierless, computer-vision-powered retail experiment after the concept failed to gain mainstream consumer traction.

🏷️ Spindrift and Amy’s Kitchen are among the first brands certified under the Non-GMO Project’s new Non-UPF Verified Standard, which assesses how foods are processed rather than just their ingredients to identify products that avoid the core characteristics of ultraprocessing.

✅ Hy-Vee launched Nothing But The Truth, a health-forward private label brand developed by its registered dietitians, starting with an organic Italian-inspired range of clean-label, mostly plant-based, non-GMO, low-sugar and high-protein foods across categories including snacks, condiments, breakfast and grains.

🏦 US children’s food company Once Upon a Farm has filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, seeking to price 10.99 million shares at $17–$19 each as it scales its pouch- and snack-led portfolio.

📦 Sabert Corporation Europe launched PULPUltra, a PFAS-free, bagasse-fibre foodservice packaging range which combines high heat and grease resistance with recyclability and compostability.

From the Community

Get hired:

• Atlantic Fish Co (USA) is hiring a Senior Bioprocess Engineer

• Nuts for Cheese (USA) are recruiting for 2 new roles

• Ananda Impact Ventures (Germany/UK) are looking for an Associate

• Koppie (Netherlands) are hiring for multiple roles

📈 The ProVeg Incubator is now accepting applications for its Fast-track to Impact Programme. This 3-month, fully online initiative is designed to help early-stage startups navigate today’s challenging market and accelerate their growth.

🔦 Applications are now open for MassChallenge Switzerland’s Accelerator - A 4-month, equity-free programme designed to accelerate your growth through tailored support, expert access, and a strong global network.

👋 Join us at the next FoodHack Meetups in Tokyo (Feb 6th) and Dubai (Feb 10th).

🧀 Just for fun: The cheesiest deodrant on the market?

What did you think of today’s round up?

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Until next time - Stay Hungry