💸 New in Funding: $1.7B fund for sustainable agrifood, crowdfunding €1 million in (almost) 1 hour, Austria's largest FoodTech Series A

💰 Private equity firm Paine Schwartz Partners closed its latest fund with $1.7 billion to support the sustainable food and agribusiness value chain. Its most recent investments include AgroFresh Solutions, Costa Group, Elemental Enzymes, HGS BioScience and Monterey Mushrooms.

🇦🇹 Austrian startup Kern Tec raised €12 million Series A funding to upcycle stone fruit pits into plant-based dairy alternatives. It will use the funds to scale up European production and enter the US market in 2025. Here’s why it’s a record-breaking raise.

🍹 Boisson, a non-alcoholic beverage retailer based in the US, secured $5 million bridge funding to support its local and global expansion plans, new partnerships, and product collections.

🦟 New Zealand-based Scentian Bio raised $2.1 million seed funding for its biosensors which mimic the olfactory capabilities of insects and have potential applications in everything from food quality control to rapid testing for diseases.

🥓 French plant-based meat producer La Vie hit its crowdfunding target of €1 million within just over an hour of launching the campaign, and is now overfunding.

🇺🇸 Novel Farms, based in California, received a $999,967 Small Business Innovation Research Phase II grant from the National Science Foundation to scale its proprietary scaffolding platform for the cultivated meat industry.

📺 British alt meat brand THIS secured investment from the UK’s largest commercial television broadcaster, ITV, as part of its Media for Equity programme, and announced a collaboration with pie brand Pieminister.

🦗 Cricket One, based in Vietnam, closed its Series A funding round with an undisclosed “seven-figure” sum and opened what it claims is Asia’s largest cricket processing facility to target human and pet food markets with cricket protein powders, textured cricket meat, cricket snacks and supplements.

Tell us what you think of this week’s funding roundup 💚

Love it 😁 Meh 😐 Hate it 🙁

Curated by Nicola and Laura 

Until next time - Stay Hungry