🔬 New in Funding: $5 million for benchtop bioreactors

🤖 US-based Shinkei secured $6 million seed funding to build robotics to automate traditional fish handling and processing, making it more humane and better preserving quality. It will use the funds to help it go from pilot to production, with a goal of having ten of its machines in use by the end of the year.

☕️ Specialty coffee company Wakuli secured €5.2 million Series A funding, having successfully opened six coffee bars in Amsterdam and one in Utrecht in 2023, and with eight new openings planned for this year.

🔬 Caladan Bio, based in the US, raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by Twelve Below. Its aim is to build ‘next generation benchtop bioreactors’, designed to help synbio companies to lower the cost of their experiments as they scale their technology.

🇳🇬 Nigerian startup Chowdeck, which is backed by Y Combinator, raised $2.5 million seed funding to scale its food delivery service, which offers consumers the convenience of ordering food and having it delivered to their doorstep within an average of 30 minutes.

🍄 Canada’s Maia Farms secured CAD2.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Joyful Ventures, PIC Group, and Koan Capital. It will use the funds to scale production of CanPro, a textured protein ingredient made with mycelium, which it claims “dramatically” improves the taste and texture of food products.

💦 UK-based CroBio secured €1.45 million seed funding to tackle drought and soil regeneration using microbes that express a sponge-like material around crop roots, also helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

💨 Jooules, based in New Zealand, raised NZ$1 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Sprout Agritech LP. It uses gaseous fermentation and specific microbe strains to turn CO2 into a complete protein powder.