🔻 New 'Upside Down' Food Pyramid

The alt-meat shutdown that made headlines at the end of 2025 (Meatable, Believer Meats) continues into 2026 as Aqua Cultured Foods and Hooked Foods follow suit.

Still, as The Good Food Institute’s Bruce Friedrich highlights his 6 reasons for optimism around the future of plant-based and cultivated meat, it reminds us just how far the sector has come.

2026 won’t be without it’s hiccups, closures, pivots and hard lessons. Here at FoodHack we’ll track the good, the bad and the messy realities of building towards food sovereignty. Onwards.

This week in FoodTech:

• 13 latest funding rounds in AgriFood

• 17.5 million take part in driest January

• 7 investment themes shaping Agrifood

The Digest

📈 What’s up? A record 17.5 million people in the UK, around a third of the population, are taking part in Dry January 2026 - the biggest year so far.

📈 Also up: US fluid milk consumption rebounded in 2024 for the first time in decades, with dollar sales up 1% and unit sales up 3% according to Circana and the US Department of Agriculture.

📉 What’s down: Aqua Cultured Foods, which was developing whole-cut, fermentation-based seafood alternatives such as tuna and scallops, has shut down after five years despite filing 19 patents, gaining FDA GRAS status, and securing interest from Michelin-starred restaurants and global retailers. Hooked Foods is shutting down after seven years during which it raised over $6 million, built one of the world’s first plant-based seafood products, and scaled across major retailers in Sweden and Germany. And DUG Foodtech AB, formerly Veg of Lund, has filed for bankruptcy after failing to secure new funding and has been delisted from Nasdaq, with its assets now being offered for sale to interested buyers.

🇺🇸 The US Department of Agriculture launched its new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, but a physicians’ non-profit is urging the them to withdraw and rewrite them after it emerged that most of the scientific panel had ties to the meat and dairy industry...

🍺 Researchers at University College London have shown that yeast waste from beer brewing can be converted into edible bacterial cellulose scaffolds that support cell growth and mimic meat texture, potentially enabling cheaper and more scalable production of cultivated meat.

🥕 A new peer-reviewed study shows that feeding carrot production side streams to selected fungi can produce high-quality mycelium protein with nutritional value comparable to animal and plant proteins.

🔻 The new food pyramid has launched. But is it upside down? Have your say.

Latest Funding

🇮🇳 Indian agritech company Arya.ag raised $81 million in an all-equity Series D round led by GEF Capital Partners to scale its tech-enabled farm-gate storage and secured lending platform, expand digital and blockchain infrastructure, and support growth toward IPO readiness.

💊 Bactolife, based in Denmark, raised €30 million Series B funding in a round led by Cross Border Impact Ventures and EIFO to clinically validate, scale and launch its precision-fermented gut-health binding proteins in the US, including the debut of its Helm ingredient brand.

🧫 Dutch cultivated meat pioneer Mosa Meat secured €15 million from existing investors including Invest-NL, LIOF, PHW Group and Jitse Groen to extend its runway to 2028, advance regulatory approvals and prepare for market entry, as it brings its hybrid cultivated–plant-based beef burgers to near-commercial pricing after cutting production costs by around 100,000-fold since 2013.

🌾 London-based agtech startup Biographica raised a £7 million seed funding round led by Faber VC to scale its AI-powered platform that identifies high-value gene-editing targets for crop traits, and deepen commercial partnerships across the global seed industry, including a new collaboration with BASF Nunhems.

🇩🇰 Danish industrial biotech EvodiaBio secured €6 million in a funding round led by RA Capital Management’s Planetary Health Fund with participation from Wild Radicals, Francis Family Funds and existing investors including EIFO, Ananke Ventures, Newtree Impact and PINC. It will use the funds to scale its yeast-based fermentation platform for producing sustainable natural aroma compounds.

💸 A data-driven snapshot of who invested in AgTech in 2025.

👀 Catch all the latest 13 funding rounds to kickstart 2026.

New in Startups

🥩 South Korean cellular agriculture company TissenBioFarm says it has achieved cultivated meat with cell densities matching or exceeding conventional meat using tissue engineering, overcoming a major technical barrier and potentially improving texture, nutrition and scalability versus existing cell-based approaches.

🤝🏼 UK’s New Wave Biotech has teamed up with Singapore’s Nurasa to give food and fermentation startups access to AI tools that can digitally test and cost future manufacturing processes, helping them understand how feasible and sustainable it will be to scale up before building real production facilities.

🦠 Buenos Aires–based startup Abydos Bioscience is developing fermentation-derived fats using oleaginous bacteria, rather than yeast or algae, to create more sustainable, feedstock-flexible alternatives such as cocoa butter replacements.

📉 Dutch cultivated meat startup Meatable is winding down operations after failing to secure further funding, despite having raised over €85 million since its founding in 2018.

💸 US mycoprotein company Meati has seen its Thornton, Colorado fermentation facility seized by the Adams County sheriff over nearly $7 million in unpaid property taxes.

Plant-Based

🍞 Impossible Foods announced a strategic partnership with EQUII to develop higher-protein grain-based products such as breads and pastas, aiming to spread plant-based protein intake beyond meat alternatives and into staple foods.

🥛 Planethic Group AG (formerly Veganz) has expanded its supply agreement with Jindilli Beverages, securing commitments for at least 10 million litres of oat and almond milk in the first year and 50 million litres in the second to support the launch of its Mililk plant-based milk production facility in the US Midwest, due to open within the next three to four months.

🆕 Beyond Meat launched Beyond Immerse, a line of clear, sparkling plant-protein drinks for gut and muscle health, marking a strategic move beyond meat alternatives into the broader health and wellness beverage market.

🌱 Gateway Health Alliances says new human trials show its two plant extracts can help people feel fuller and eat less by increasing the natural “fullness hormone” GLP-1, working in a similar way to popular weight-loss drugs but using botanical ingredients.

🍔 Juicy Marbles launched Umami Burger in the UK, a whole-food-forward, high-protein veggie patty made with ingredients like quinoa, miso and seitan.

🇫🇷 French plant-based meat brand La Vie debuted a UK-first range of vegan salami sticks in Classic and Spicy flavours, offering a high-protein, lower-salt and lower-fat alternative to pork salami.

Big Food

👩🏻‍🌾 UK retailer Marks & Spencer’s Brussels sprouts supplier Seahills has dedicated 20% of its land to nature by planting wildflowers between crops to boost biodiversity and natural pest control, while improving soil health and produce quality.

☕️ Starbucks India partnered with local biofermented yeast protein company SuperYou to launch a Protein Cold Foam, adding 11–18g of protein in flavours including chocolate, banana and vanilla, now available across its 500 stores.

🥤 Coca-Cola has paused plans to sell its UK-based Costa Coffee chain, acquired for $5.1 billion in 2018, after an auction involving bidders such as Bain Capital, TDR Capital, Apollo and KKR failed to produce offers high enough.

👎🏼 PepsiCo and Walmart are facing a consumer class action lawsuit alleging they engaged in an illegal price-fixing arrangement that gave Walmart preferential soft-drink pricing and caused shoppers to overpay for Pepsi products at other grocery retailers, claims both companies deny and say they will contest in court.

👯‍♀️ PepsiCo unveiled a first-of-its-kind, multi-year collaboration with Siemens and NVIDIA to deploy AI-powered digital twins across its manufacturing and warehousing network, enabling faster facility design and lower capital costs by optimising operations before making physical changes.

🍼 Nestlé has recalled batches of its infant formula brands SMA, BEBA and NAN across Europe and markets including Turkey and Argentina due to potential contamination with cereulide, a toxin linked to nausea and vomiting.

🫨 DoorDash has banned a driver after confirming they used an AI-generated photo to falsely claim a food delivery was completed.

From the Community

Get hired:

• Hack (remote) are hiring in Events and Media

• Norrsken (Sweden) are recruiting an Investor

• Oleo (USA) are hiring a Fermentation Engineer

• Griffith Foods (USA) are looking for a Growth Manager

• Fresh Venture Studios (Netherlands) are hiring a Venture Builder

👋 Join us next at a FoodHack Meetup in Zurich or Tokyo.

🛠️ How to build a moat in alt protein manufacturing.

7️⃣ Hadar Sutovsky at ICL Startup Hub shares her 7 investment themes shaping Agrifood & Climate Tech in 2026

📊 The rise of insurgent brands is up approx 39%. Here’s who to watch.

👀 Just for fun: Does this take the cake?

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Until next time - Stay Hungry