🍭 Mushroom-Infused Popsicles

What are you having for dinner tonight? Most of us haven’t decided what we will eat later today let alone what we will be eating in 10, 50 or even a 100 years’ time.

Here at FoodHack, we’re teaming up with Swissnex for the ultimate showdown at NY Climate Week next week. Where we ask ‘what will we eat in 100 years?’ and more importantly ‘what is it going to take to get us there?’

Together we’ll host FoodTech’s bright minds from Planted, New Roots, ReBORN Farms, Orbillion Bio, Kidemis, Tufts University, HelloFresh and The Rockefeller Foundation at a pop-up boxing arena for the fight of the century: the one for planet Earth.

When: Sep 27, 10:45am - 12:30pm
Where: Performance Space New York, 150 First Avenue

Join us there 🍎

This week in FoodTech:
🤖 20 crop seeding robots to know
📉 90% drop in eGrocery investments
🥬 $40m for plant gene-editing pioneer

The Digest

📈 What’s up? The UK's Food Standards Agency is set to introduce changes next year to accelerate and ‘modernise’ the approval process for novel foods like cultivated meat, including a new public register that replaces the existing system of requiring a statutory instrument, which adds up to six months to a process that already takes over two-and-a-half years.

📉 What’s down? Data from AgFunder reveals that investment in eGrocery is down 90% from its $19 billion peak in 2021.

🔒 Closed down. Kevin Hart’s plant-based restaurant chain, Hart House, closed all its locations last week, with the reasons for the closure remaining unclear.

🤝 The International Finance Corporation is partnering with Danish climate fintech Agreena to advance sustainable farming across Eastern Europe by improving farmers' access to finance and supporting banks in achieving their green finance goals. 

🐟 Future Ocean Foods welcomed 17 alt seafood companies to its community, including Bluu Seafood, Forsea Foods and Monkeys By The Sea.

🤓 Study this: A Glossary of 180 terms related to venture capital and finance.

6️⃣ Sifted covers six things you should know if you’re fundraising this autumn.

FoodTech Fundraising

🥬 Plant gene editing pioneer Pairwise raised $40 million Series C funding and entered a five-year joint venture with agtech giant Corteva to advance its technology, with the aim of boosting climate resilience in corn and soy crops.

🧬 Arzeda, based in Seattle, secured $38 million in an oversubscribed funding round led by Sofinnova Partners. It uses AI to design proteins and enzymes for use in the likes of natural sweeteners, laundry detergent and biodegradable materials.

🍄 New York-based startup Ecovative raised $28 million in a growth equity round to scale its mycelium-based MyBacon product and launch new sustainable leather alternatives.

🥔 Denmark’s MATR Foods secured a €20 million loan from the European Investment Bank to build its first large-scale production facility. It produces meat alternatives via fungi fermentation, using local crops such as beetroot, potatoes, lupin, and peas.

🇳🇿 New Zealand's government is investing NZ$9.6 million ($5.95 million) in a five-year initiative to develop cultivated fish products, with research focusing on creating new cell production systems for sustainable seafood.

🧀 French biotech Standing Ovation secured €3.75 million Series A+ funding for its precision-fermented, animal-free protein ingredient, Advanced Casein, with the aim of launching in the US by 2025.

🪩 Discover all 15 FoodTech fundraises from this week including funding for pulse-based protein ingredients, sprouted buckwheat products and to grow microalgae in fermentation tanks.

Startup Milestones

🍄 US startup Santa Cruz Fungi debuted Shroomsicles - smiley face-shaped frozen novelties infused with mushrooms like lion’s mane.

🥩 Israeli cultivated meat startup Aleph Farms is preparing to launch its beef steaks in restaurants through a collaboration with Michelin-starred chef Eyal Shani.

💉 ArkeaBio, based in the US, claims that vaccination is the most cost-effective and scalable method to reduce livestock methane emissions, using a vaccine that disrupts methane-producing microbes in cattle.

☕️ The BBC taste tests alt-coffee from Northern Wonder and Atomo. Here’s how they faired.

Plant Based

🥚 Netherlands-based revyve is launching a “next generation” gluten-free egg replacer made from baker’s yeast.

🥩 Mexican startup Forma Foods has developed what it claims is the best plant-based carne asada using a patented 3D printing process called "chaotic printing”, which it says accurately replicates the texture and appearance of beef.

💰 Swiss food manufacturer Hero Group has acquired UK-based vegan brand Deliciously Ella, in a move that will allow Hero to expand its presence in the UK and enable Deliciously Ella to “reach millions more customers around the world”. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

🍯 MeliBio secured a patent for its plant-based honey in Germany, opening up its products to more EU consumers.

Big Food

🍕Pizza Hut is offering to print resumes on pizza boxes to help jobseekers find work.

🥙 UK supermarket Tesco is opening a new facility in Northamptonshire that will turn 1,000 tonnes of surplus food each week into animal feed, with the aim of “revolutionising” food waste management in the industry.

💨 JBS USA is joining forces with GreenGasUSA to produce renewable natural gas from wastewater streams at its beef and poultry processing facilities.

🚜 General Mills and Ahold Delhaize are partnering to transition 70,000 acres within their shared supply chain to regenerative agriculture practices.

🌮 Spot the difference: Can you tell which of these Chiptole bowls was made by hand, and which was made by a robot?

From the Community

Get a new job:

• Microharvest are hiring a Scientific Program Director

• R2G Media is looking for a Freelance Content Marketeer

• Startlife is recruiting a Startup Analyst

🛤️ How much runway do startups need to raise in 2024?

👑 Is fermentation king in alternative proteins? Have your say here.

🦓 Just for fun: Investors doing due diligence on a startup (hint, watch til the end)

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Until next time - Stay Hungry