New in Funding: 💸 $80M grant for climate-friendly farming

💸 Virginia Tech received a grant of $80 million from the United States Department of Agriculture to help farmers implement climate-friendly practices that could significantly reduce greenhouse gasses.

🇯🇵 Japanese VC Beyond Next Ventures raised $67.7 million at the first close of its new deep tech fund, BNV Fund 3, with which it will support deep tech startups emerging from universities and research institutions.

🐟 US-based cultivated seafood producer BlueNalu secured $33.5 million Series B funding and extended its partnerships with APAC seafood leaders to scale production of its cultivated bluefin tuna as it works towards regulatory approval.

🥚Munich-based Orbem raised €30 million in a Series A funding round led by 83North for its industrial MRI scanner, combined with an AI-based platform, which scans eggs in one second to enable hatcheries to determine the sex of an egg in a contactless and non-invasive manner.

🇫🇷 French precision fermentation company Bon Vivant secured €15 million in an oversubscribed seed round led by Sofinnova Partners, Sparkfood, and Captech. Here’s how it will use the funds.

🇮🇱 Israeli food tech Wanda Fish Technologies raised $7 million seed funding to optimise its technology and accelerate the scalability of its cultivated whole-cut filet of bluefin tuna.

🇪🇸 Catalonia’s Department of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda, and the Institute of Agri-Food Research and Technology have made an historic €7 million investment into Spain’s first Center for Innovation in Alternative Proteins, which will focus on alternative ingredients, food, and feed.

🍕 Berlin-based Lanch secured €6.5 million Series A funding to create food delivery brands for influencers, cooked across virtual kitchens. Its first collaboration, a pizza brand called “Happy Slice” created with German YouTubers Knossi and Trymacs, sold more than 30,000 pizzas in its launch weekend.

🎣 Italian aquaponic agricultural company The Circle secured €2.1 million in a round led by Opes Italia and Sparviero Holding. It is the largest aquaponic farm in Europe, and will use the funds to build new facilities and expand production.

🌾 Paul-Tech, an agritech startup based in Estonia, raised €1.4 million seed funding to expand into the UK market. Its platform gives farmers and land managers real-time insights to improve their soil management.

🍫 LA-based low-calorie chocolate brand Gatsby Chocolate, founded by former founders of Halo Top Creamery, secured $500,000 from Shark Tank investors to raise awareness of its product, which has “about half the calories and up to 75% less sugar than most of the other chocolates out there”.

🧀 The University of Nottingham and its spinoff The Good Pulse Company received a £300,000 grant from Innovate UK to further their research into making nutritious plant-based cheese from UK-grown yellow peas.

🎨 Israel’s Phytolon secured “substantial” funding from investors including Nextgen Nutrition Investment Partners to launch its natural food colourants, made via fermentation.

💶 Austrian SaaS platform provider inoqo raised a seven-figure investment. Its B2B business model enables grocery retailers to assess the environmental impact of their product ranges.

➕ Beyond the fundamentals of seed investing, how can investors identify the outliers? Giuseppe Stuto of 186 Ventures explains all here.