🫒 Olive waste's high-tech glow-up

Chocolate is entering its post-plant era, and Big Food is backing it. 

Cargill just teamed up with cocoa biotech startup Kokomodo to fast-track cultivated cocoa from lab to factory floor, bringing commercialisation one step closer to reality.

If you’re tracking where corporate money is flowing, we’ve mapped it out. This week, we built a fresh list of 88 European CVCs - including major food and ag players like Rewe Group, PINC, Nestlé, dsm-firmenich, Bel, Mondelez, Grey Silo Ventures, Nutreco, Cosun, and Döhler Ventures - all actively investing in the future of food.

See where Big Food is placing its next bets.

This week in FoodTech:

🤖 TerraClear rolls out a rock-spotting farm robot
📉 Alternative protein funding dips below $1B 
🛒 Uber’s AI grocery shopping: add to cart or add to chaos?

The Digest

📉 The Good Food Institute reports that global investment in alternative protein companies fell 20% year-on-year in 2025, and totalled under $1 billion for the first time since 2018.

🌱 The Global Stewardship Group launched a new industry programme to support responsible scale-up and commercialisation of plant molecular farming, with five startups (Mozza Foods, Alpine Bio, Miruku, NewMoo and Finally Foods) joining to first create a traceability and control framework. 

🇺🇸 The North American Millers’ Association has urged the US FDA to reject a citizen petition seeking to revoke GRAS status for refined carbohydrates such as refined flour and sweeteners, arguing the proposal is not supported by scientific consensus and would severely disrupt the US food supply.

⛔️ A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked a state law that would require food manufacturers to add warning labels for products containing artificial dyes and certain additives.

🎟️ Get your HackSummit pass and join us for 1 or 2 days of high-impact networking, dealmaking and fun on April 22-23. Tip: First Side Events are already live.

Latest Funding

🥤 RTD beverage startup Throne Sport Coffee, based in the US, raised $10 million in a round backed by professional athletes including Patrick Mahomes, CPG veterans and beverage executives to expand distribution of its performance-focused ready-to-drink coffee range.

🌾 UK crop biotech startup Resurrect Bio, which engineers genetic disease resistance in crops, secured an initial $8.1 million Series A round led by Corteva Catalyst with participation from Calculus Capital, Pymwymic, UKI2S, SynBioVen and AgFunder to accelerate product development and expand its operations.

👶🏻 US-based baby and children’s food startup FoodNerd raised $7.5 million in a funding round led by Selva Ventures to scale its nutrient-dense snacks, such as its sprouted-seed Mega Puffs line.

🍝 Meal planning and grocery insights platform Appetise, based in New Zealand, secured $7 million Series A funding led by Icehouse Ventures with participation from OIF Ventures, Brand Fund, NZVC and K1W1 to expand its operations and prepare for US market entry.

🇹🇷 Turkish startup Paket Mutfak, which operates a multi-brand, delivery-focused cloud kitchen and software platform, raised $3.8 million from existing investors Nokta Yatırım Holding, Ünlü & Co and Fırat İşbecer plus new backers including Ali Sabancı, Sip & Bite GSYF, Robert Baler and Corsini Global, to further expand its operations.

🤖 Italy’s NANDO secured €3.3 million in a funding round led by MAIA Ventures and CDP Venture Capital with participation from the Piemonte Next Fund, Club degli Investitori, La4G and EMBA Capital Partners. It will use the funds to expand its AI-powered waste and food-waste monitoring and optimisation solutions.

🐮 New Zealand-based agri-biotech startup Ruminant BioTech has launched a CAD$7.6 million research programme in Canada, supported by a CAD$2.8 million Alberta government grant plus industry co-funding and company capital, to validate and commercialise its slow-release methane-reduction bolus for pasture-raised cattle.

🧖‍♀️ Vivi Labs, based in the US, raised just over $500,000 pre-seed funding to launch functional coffee blends combining organic coffee with collagen, nicotinamide riboside and other wellness ingredients.

☕️ Belgian startup Koppie, which makes a single-ingredient coffee alternative from fermented and roasted peas that can be brewed like coffee, secured follow-on funding from DOEN Ventures to support scaling and commercialisation with its first launch partners.

New in Startups

🫒 Israel’s PhenOlives, which upcycles olive oil by-products into sustainable food ingredients, launched the world’s first fully automated continuous industrial olive-flour production line, enabling large-scale output of up to 400 tonnes per season.

🚜 US-based precision agriculture company TerraClear launched TerraScout, a fully autonomous field robot that captures high-resolution images to map rocks and identify weeds in broad-acre row crops, enabling real-time planning to improve farm efficiency and input use.

🪸 UK seaweed biotech company Algapelago Marine Limited, in partnership with Rothamsted Research and the UK Agri-Tech Centre, has moved closer to commercialising a low-energy processed cultivated kelp biostimulant and animal feed supplement.

💡 Interesting: Jean Louwrens at De Novo Foodlabs explains why you can’t pasteurise bioactives.

Plant-Based

✅ Plantible Foods received a “no questions” letter from the US Food and Drug Administration for its duckweed-derived Rubi Protein, an alternative functional protein for foods such as baked goods and plant-based meat.

🍄 US-based startup Joyn Foods secured K–12 approval in South Carolina to sell its mycelium- and mushroom-enhanced blended meat products under the 50Cut label to schools statewide via the SCPA procurement system.

💌 Twenty plant-based food companies including Beyond Meat, Quorn, The Vegetarian Butcher and Linda McCartney Foods have urged the European Union to reject a proposed ban on using meat-like terms such as “burger” and “sausage” on plant-based product packaging, warning it would increase costs and consumer confusion.

📈 UK supermarket Tesco reports renewed growth in chilled plant-based food demand across its stores, driven by interest in natural, minimally processed plant proteins and scratch cooking.

🇵🇱 Poland’s Ministry of Health has introduced new school nutrition rules that will, from September 2026, guarantee students access to fully plant-based meals, including at least one weekly legume-based vegan lunch.

Big Food

🍫 Cargill has partnered with Israeli startup Kokomodo, which develops cell-based cocoa ingredients, in a collaboration supported by funding from EIT Food to validate, test and scale cell-based chocolate applications in industrial settings and accelerate their path to market.

🛒 Uber launched Cart Assistant, a new AI-powered feature in its Uber Eats app that acts as a personal grocery shopper across partner grocers including Albertsons, Aldi and Kroger, using text and image prompts to build full baskets and help users plan, compare and automate their grocery shopping.

👵🏼 Nestlé debuted its Nestlé Vital line of nutrient-rich shake powders for midlife and older consumers to support energy, strength, focus and sleep.

🥤 PepsiCo launched its first nationwide Prebiotic Cola, with 30 calories, 5g of sugar and 3g of prebiotic fibre, and no artificial sweeteners.

From the Community

💡 10 leading cultivated meat CEOs weigh in on the industry’s future

🇩🇰 What went on at FoodHack Copenhagen.

🔝 5 opportunities for Impact Startups (including the FoodTech World Cup).

🥛 Just for fun: If Oatly joined in with the Streisand Effect

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Until next time - Stay Hungry