🍚 New in Funding: $14M to decarbonise rice

💸 Agrifoodtech VC PeakBridge closed its PeakBridge Growth Fund II with $187 million to support startups working in the future of food. It has made eight investments so far, including animal-free dairy company Standing Ovation, cultivated meat producer Vow, and cacao replacement maker Win-Win.

🧮 Restaurant365 raised $175 million, at a valuation of over $1 billion, to further scale its all-in-one, cloud-based accounting, inventory, scheduling, payroll, and HR solution developed specifically for restaurants.

🍼 US-based infant nutrition company ByHeart, which is ‘Clean Label Project Certified’, raised $95 million to support its national launch plans and innovation pipeline.

🫑 Pepper secured $30 million in a Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Growth. It will use the funds to leverage advanced technology, like generative AI, to expand its e-commerce platform for food distributors.

🌾 Singapore-based Rize raised $14 million, in a Series A funding round co-led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, GenZero, Temasek, and Wavemaker Impact, to decarbonise rice cultivation in Asia. Its digital platform is designed to help farmers understand their carbon footprint, and define and finance their climate action plan.

🇮🇳 Niqo Robotics, based in India, secured $13 million Series B funding for its AI-powered spot spraying technology, designed to be retrofitted to existing agricultural equipment.

🇰🇷 South Korea’s Simple Planet received a grant of ₩11 billion ($8.1 million) for a government project to boost the country’s food security through cultivated ingredient development, and is working towards regulatory approval for its cultivated meat ingredients in 2025.

🇦🇺 Australian startup AgriWebb raised $7.2 million for its beef cattle management platform, designed to give meat packers and retailers access to data to reduce emissions in their supply chain, and which is currently being used to manage more than 23 million livestock across more than 150 million acres in 18 countries.

🇨🇦 Relocalize, based in Canada, raised CAD 5.8 million seed funding to expand its autonomous micro-factory platform, designed to decentralise food and beverage production, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and costs.

🧈 British dairy brand All Things Butter secured £2.2 million seed funding following a successful launch into national retailers. The brand is aiming to disrupt the traditional, heritage-led dairy industry with a chef-led butter range that is churned twice to be ‘fresh and creamy’.

💡 German agtech hexafarms secured €1.3 million pre-seed funding for its AI-powered greenhouse optimisation technology, which helps increase crop productivity while reducing preventable losses.

🇳🇿 Metrovate, based in New Zealand, raised $1 million in a funding round led by Sprout Agritech. It will use the funds to further develop and scale its precision plant growth “biostimulant”, designed to help growers achieve crop resilience, faster recovery and better yields. 

🐟 Canadian plant-based seafood startup Save Da Sea raised CAD 650,000 in a seed II funding round. It will use the funds to accelerate its US expansion plans for its salmon and tuna alternatives.