🐖 New in Funding: Cultivated pork fat in 21 days

🦛 Hippo Harvest raised $21 million Series B funding, in a round led by Standard Investments, at a $145 million post-money valuation. It uses closed-loop, direct-to-root fertiliser systems, machine learning and robots to grow fresh produce in repurposed greenhouses, reducing food waste and land use.

🇮🇱 Israel’s FreezeM secured $14.2 million, in a Series A funding round led by an undisclosed group of “industrial investors” and the European Innovation Council Fund. It intends to build a hub of breeding facilities for its insect breeding-as-a-service model to support insect farmers in different regions.

🧫 South Korea-based cultivated meat startup Simple Planet raised 8 billion won (approximately $6 million) pre-Series A funding to accelerate its R&D efforts and scale production of its cell-based meat, which it claims has a higher concentration of fatty acids than conventional meat.

🍄 Functional energy brand Odyssey raised $6 million for its ‘mushroom elixirs’, each formulated with a blend of 2750mg of Lions Mane and Cordyceps mushrooms to offer an energy boost, cognitive clarity and focus.

🇰🇪 Kenya’s Shamba Pride secured $3.7 million pre-Series A funding from EU agriculture financing initiative EDFI AgriFI and Seedstars Africa Ventures. Its platform is designed to digitise last-mile distribution for the country’s agricultural inputs, to help improve quality and traceability alongside access to information.

🍄 London-based D2C ecommerce startup Spacegoods raised £2.5 million seed funding to expand its functional mushroom and nootropic product line, with a view to capturing more of the adaptogenic mushroom market, which is predicted to reach $30 billion by 2032.

🇧🇷 Brazil’s first startup developing cultivated animal ingredients, Cellva Ingredients, secured R$6.5 million (approximately $1.3 million) in a funding round led by Seed4SCience to scale its cultivated pork fat, which it claims to be able to produce in just 21 days.

🐮 Painterland Sisters, based in the US, secured $1.235 million via a crowdfunding campaign on Wefunder. It sells lactose-free, organic Icelandic skyr yoghurt, made with cow’s milk from its own farms, and will use the funds to support further expansion.

🤝 British startup twig has been awarded £340,000 by InnovateUK, and will work with the team at UCL to build out its high-throughput fermentation array for bioprocess development.

💸 Vancouver-based Renaissance BioScience has been awarded CAD $232,000 by the Canadian Food Innovation Network to develop a yeast solution which can neutralise compounds that lead to off-flavours and undesirable aromas in plant-based flours and proteins.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scottish mycoprotein startup ENOUGH secured an undisclosed investment from Cargill, as a “top up” to its recent Series C fundraise, and expanded its strategic partnership in order for Cargill to use and market its ‘ABUNDA’ mycoprotein.