☕️ New in Funding: Coffee farming decarbonisation

💰 The Bezos Earth Fund is investing $60 million to establish the Centers for Sustainable Protein, which will target tech barriers to making plant-based, fermentation-derived and cultivated meat products cheaper, healthier and tastier.

🤖 US-based Bear Robotics secured $60 million from LG Electronics. Its AI-powered server robots are autonomous towers on wheels designed to replace restaurant waiters, and are currently operating in several establishments across the US, Japan and South Korea.

🇪🇺 A new European food innovation coalition launched the Regenerative Innovation Portfolio, a €30 million initiative aimed at advancing regenerative agriculture practices across the continent.

🍽️ Germany’s NeoTaste raised €21 million Series A funding for its restaurant discovery app, which offers consumers exclusive introductory offers to help restaurants widen their customer base.

🧬 Tierra Biosciences, based in California, secured $11.4 million in a Series A funding round led by Material Impact. Its platform is designed to enable customers to order proteins online that can make anything from antibodies to growth factor for a food product.

🇮🇪 Ministers from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland announced a €9 million funding initiative to support all-island bioeconomy innovation and solutions.

🌻 Protein Industries Canada announced a $6.9 million project to grow the country’s supply of protein-rich ingredients derived from hemp and sunflower.

🇨🇭 Swiss startup Cotierra (formerly Terra Preta) raised €1 million in an oversubscribed seed funding round. Its biochar solution is tailored to the Global South, and converts coffee tree residues into biochar which is then reapplied to soils to help store carbon and reduce emissions. 

🧃 Australian startup Bae Juice secured $1 million to expand its ‘hangover prevention’ drink into the US, having already sold more than 2.5 million units in Australia in the last five years.

💊 Amsterdam-based Vini Mini raised €500,000 seed funding to further develop its line of nutritional products and supplements that can be given to babies to expose them to allergens in a safe manner, since research shows that 80% of food allergies can be prevented by offering babies allergens early and often. 

🧫 Californian cultivated meat startup Orbillion Bio secured additional funding, bringing its total raised to date to $15 million, to scale production and further develop its biotech platform, which completed a 200-litre production run in September and for which it has developed an algorithm that can make low-cost manufacturing possible.

💸 1-2-Taste, based in the Netherlands, secured an undisclosed amount of seed funding. Its digital B2B marketplace for food ingredients and product development is designed to streamline the sourcing journey for food and beverage companies