🍳 New in Funding: Turning CO2 into Oil

Check out the FoodTech funds and funding rounds from the week:

🌾 Seed gene-editing startup Inari raised $103 million at a post-money valuation of $1.65 billion as it prepares for commercialisation. Its platform produces soybean, corn and wheat seeds that produce the same or greater yield as conventional while using fewer resources.

💰 Healthy fast-food chain Leon’s co-founder, Henry Dimbleby, launched Bramble Partners, a new VC firm on a mission to discover “better ways to feed the world”. Its £50 million fund will support startups making the food system more sustainable, healthier and more secure.

✍️ Owner.com raised $33 million Series B funding for its all-in-one platform for restaurants which includes online ordering, a website builder, customer relationship management tools, marketing automation and a branded mobile app generator to “help restaurant owners fight back”.

🇩🇰 New Danish VC Kost Capital is raising its first fund, targeting €25 million from backers including Denmark’s sovereign fund EIFO and its own founding limited partners to support pre-seed and seed startups across Europe working within B2B inputs in the future of food. It has made three investments so far: Estonian palm oil alternative company Äio, French infant formula company Numi, and Danish alt ingredient company Nutrumami.

🍫 Californian CPG startup Voyage Foods secured $22 million to scale its portfolio of ethical pantry staples, including cocoa-free chocolates which it claims are the “most sustainable ever” after an independent life-cycle assessment.

🍫 Germany’s Planet A Foods, parent company of cocoa-free chocolate brand Choviva, raised $15.4 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round led by World Fund. Read which ingredient substitute might be next.

🤖 Chef Robotics, based in San Francisco, raised $14.75 million and is now selling its food assembly robot, which uses various sensors and its own software platform to collect training data that helps itself learn how to manipulate a large corpus of ingredients.

🤖 Saga Robotics closed $11.5 million to support the US and UK expansion of its AI-powered Thorvald 3 robots, which reduce plant diseases and promote sustainable food production with lower CO2 emissions and a 60-90% reduction in pesticides.

🇺🇸 US food-as-medicine and telehealth startup Foodsmart secured $10 million as part of an expanded Series C funding round, to support an expansion of its “Foodscripts” program, which uses “food care” as a better, longer-term, and less costly solution than weight management drugs.

📦 UK-based Xampla secured $7 million from new and existing investors to advance the production of its biodegradable, plant-based packaging materials and expand its consumer packaging brand, Morro, into new markets.

🌱 New York-based Mezcla secured $4 million Series A funding to support retail expansion of its plant-based protein bars, formulated with pea protein crisps, quinoa, pumpkin seeds, nut butters, and flavours such as pistachio and blueberry.

✂️ Australian food distribution platform Yume, which helps to cut food waste by connecting food manufacturers with surplus stock with businesses and charities that can use it, raised $2 million seed funding to improve its tech capabilities ahead of its international expansion plans.

🍷 New Zealand-based wine analysis startup Marama Labs secured €1.75 million in a seed funding round led by The Yield Lab to expand its global footprint. Its tech platform enables opaque liquid samples to be analysed more rapidly than when using existing technology, to help optimise and improve production processes.

🥃 Scottish gin, rum and whisky distillery Holyrood Distillery raised £2 million from wine and spirits fintech Ferovinum. It will use the funds to release capital from its maturing cask inventory, and export its cased goods to international markets.

🛢️ COLIPI, based in Hamburg, secured €1.8 million seed funding for its patented carbon capture and biotransformation technology that converts CO2 into ‘Climate Oil’, a sustainable alternative to crude oil and palm oil for use in multiple applications.

🥥 UK-based The Coconut Collab, which makes coconut-based dairy alternatives, raised £1.5 million Series B funding to scale its operations and establish a firmer foothold throughout the UK and Europe.

💦 Agrow Analytics, based in Spain, raised €650,000 in a seed funding round led by GoHub Ventures, Demium Capital and First Drop. It will use the funds to consolidate its precision technology to optimise water use and reduce water footprint in agriculture.

🇵🇱 Polish startup ZeroQs secured PLN 2 million (just under $500,000) for its intelligent shopping carts, designed as an alternative to self-service checkouts to reduce queues and improve the shopping experience for consumers. 

🧫 Czech biotech Mewery, which is developing cultivated pork using microalgae, was awarded a non-dilutive grant of almost €200,000 from the Czech government through its CzechInvest Technological Incubator to improve its operational efficiency as it scales up.

🏈 Robotic meat-free fast-food restaurant concept Kernel, created by Chipotle founder Steve Ellis, secured funding from two star NFL players. It uses a semi-automated operational process to help address inefficiencies in food service.

🐟 Aquaconnect, South Asia’s largest aquaculture network, secured funding from S2G Ventures’ Ocean Fund for its AI-powered mobile farm advisor which supports fish and shrimp farmers with their farm productivity and disease prediction.