🍗 New in Funding: AI-powered fermentation

🤖 US-based Burro raised $24 million Series B funding to grow its autonomous harvest-assist robots from ‘people to pallet scale’ within the most labour-intensive areas of agriculture.

🇮🇱 SeeTree, based in Israel, secured $17.5 million in a Series C funding round co-led by HSBC Asset Management and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Its “tree intelligence platform” uses military-grade drones, ground sensors, AI, multi-spectral imaging and in-field data collection to digitise the process of monitoring tree health within orchards and forests.

🍗 Israel’s Mediterranean Food Lab raised $17 million Series A funding to scale its AI-powered solid state fermentation technology, which it uses to create ingredients it claims can “transform the sensory experience of eating plant-based foods”.

🍊 Israeli startup Better Juice closed its Series A funding round, including investment from Ingredion Ventures. Its enzymatic technology converts up to 80% of the sugars in fruit juice into dietary fibres and non-digestible sugars, and it says the new partnership with Ingredion will allow it to extend the technology to other liquids with natural sources of sugar, such as milk, beer, and wine.

🌾 Farm-ng, based in the Bay Area, secured $10 million Series A funding in a round led by Acre Venture Partners. Its autonomous modular farming technology is designed to help humans with tasks such as soil preparation, harvest, and crop care.

☕️ Californian specialty coffee brand Reborn Coffee, Inc. secured $1 million from company chairman Farooq Arjomand to support its expansion plans in Southeast Asia and other markets.

🇺🇬 Fiber Foods, based in Uganda, secured an undisclosed investment from agrifoodtech fund Foodsparks. It is creating a scalable, gender-friendly value chain for a versatile and affordable jackfruit ingredient for plant-based meat alternatives for foodservice.