Most of the top deals involved eGrocers and Restaurant Marketplaces, highlighting the continent’s thirst for ‘quick commerce.’
Consumer-facing downstrream technologies bagged $32 billion in VC investment in 2021; the bulk of it was thanks to a few big eGrocery deals.
Seattle-based IUNU will use the new funds to expand its platform, which provides computer vision and data analytics to CEA growers.
Bowery announced its acquisition of robotics startup Traptic last week. Here, AFN analyzes the deal and what it means for the wider indoor ag space.
The Paris-based startup will supply insect protein to ADM’s pet foods division, to create “high-quality nutritional” products with “a significantly lower carbon footprint and land requirement.”
The timing of KKR’s vote of confidence is particularly interesting as concerns mount about the future of some vertical farms, but Bowery CEO Irving Fain says it’s a positive inflection point for the industry.
Foods from the lab, such as cultivated meat, drove a greater amount of early-stage investment in upstream technologies and business models in the first half of 2021.
It’s “an instrumental step in upscaling the European insect sector,” according to industry group IPIFF.
AgFunder’s 2021 Farm Tech Investment Report, released earlier this month, showed that Ag Biotechnology deals increased 58% year-on-year.
Investor backing for technologies focusing on or close to the farm soared to $7.9 billion in 2020, or 41%, representing a bigger year-over-year jump than both agrifoodtech and global VC investing.
Upstream categories – that is, technologies and business models nearer the farm or lab – outstripped downstream funding in 2020 for the first time in seven years.
It wasn’t only the pandemic that shifted trends in Europe’s agrifoodtech scene. 2020 was the start of a new innovation cycle on the continent.
The agrifoodtech sector not only rebounded quickly from Covid’s impacts, it far outpaced last year’s performance. Investor confidence speaks to a maturing sector and an environment ripe for new bets on next generation technologies.
Albertsons reached out to the indoor farming startup amid the Covid-19 pandemic to find a new source of fresh produce to keep up with consumer demand.
AppHarvest is planning to build the world’s largest greenhouse facility in Kentucky to address Covid-19 produce supply chain woes.
Downstream investment declined by 67% year-on-year. But upstream funding more than doubled, as startups and investors zeroed in on farm and supply chain solutions.
European Agri-FoodTech startups raised $3.4 billion in funding in 2019 across 419 deals, a 70% year-over-year growth, according to new research from AgFunder in collaboration
Luckin Coffee scored one of China’s top agrifoodtech startup fundings just before its May IPO, while e-grocer MissFresh landed the country’s biggest deal.
Venture capital investment across all industries dropped in 2019 — around 16%, according to the VenturePulse report — against a backdrop of global uncertainty related
there are a few ways to interpret this $19.8 billion figure. Though it signals a 4.8% drop in funding and 15% decline in deal activity year-over-year, it also represents a staggering 250% growth in five years, and proves that the huge scale of investments in 2018 was no freak outlier.
I’m drowning in new food! Can someone please restructure me out of this mess?