The US state of Massachusetts got its first drive-thru grocery store with the launch of Adie’s, which also raised $10 million. In agtech, Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures pumped $12 million into methane-reduction tech and AgFunder led a $3 million round for farm real estate marketplace CommonGround. Meanwhile, one cultivated meat company has achieved kosher status.
Foodtech funding
🇺🇸 Addie’s bags $10 million to open a tech-enabled, drive-thru grocery store. Rose Park Advisors‘ Disruptive Innovation Fund led the seed round. (Boston25 News)
🇺🇸 Nourish raises $8 million seed round led by Thrive Capital. The startup links users with registered dietitians for health consultations. (TechCrunch)
🇮🇱 Pigmentum raises $6 million to make animal-free milk and cheese from lettuce. Investors in the seed round include Kibbutz Yotvata, Tnuva and others. (Times of Israel)
🇺🇸 The ISH Company lands $5 million for plant-based seafood. ACCELR8 led the seed round with participation from Stray Dog Capital and multiple angel investors. (The Fish Site)
🇬🇧 Plant-based chocolate business Love Cocoa secures £4.25 million to further build up its business. The company is the creation of James Cadbury, great-great-great-grandson of the original Cadbury founder. (UKTN)
🇩🇰 Food management SaaS platform Kanpla raises €2.2 million to fight food waste in canteens. Dutch VC firm henQ led the seed round. (Tech.eu)
🇬🇷 🇬🇧 BibeCoffee raises €2.1 million ($2.3 million) from Eleven Ventures and others. BibeCoffee makes an IoT monitoring system that helps coffeeshops manage waste, quality and more. (EU Startups)
🇸🇬 Hawker food delivery startup WhyQ raises $1 million in Series A2 funding. Kairos Capital Group led the round. (Tech in Asia)
Agtech funding
🇺🇸 Soil data startup EarthOptics nabs $27.6 million Series B funding. Continental Grain, a major grain and animal agriculture company in the US, led the round via its VC arm. (AFN)
🇮🇳 Irrigation and cold storage solutions provider Ecozen closes $25 million Series C. Nuveen led the round along with Dare Ventures, the investment arm of Indian fertilizer and crop protection producer Coromandel International. (AFN)
🇦🇺 Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures leads A$17 million ($12 million) round for Rumin8. The seed funding will go towards commercial trials of Rumin8’s methane-reducing livestock feed additive. (Startup Daily)
🇺🇸 Farm real estate marketplace CommonGround lands $3 million seed round led by AgFunder. US land brokerages and landowners The Peoples Company and others participated. (AFN) [Disclosure: AgFunder is AFN’s parent company].
🇮🇪 Proveye closes €1 million ($1 million) seed round for remote sensing agriculture technology. Inspire Investments and Enterprise Ireland led the round. (Silicon Republic)
🇬🇧 Upp secures £500,000 to commercialize its broccoli harvesting and upcycling tech. Elbow Beach Capital provided the pre-seed investment round. (UKTN)
M&A, IPOs and partnerships
🇳🇱 Egrocer Crisp acquires meal box business De Krat for undisclosed terms. The deal will eventually see the two companies become one entity in the online grocery space. (PYMNTS)
🇺🇸 Ginkgo Bioworks & infant nutrition company NAMUH launch multi-product collaboration. They will develop functional oligosaccharides structurally identical to those found in human breast milk. (Ginkgo Bioworks)
🇳🇴 🇫🇮 Interactive cooking platform Chew acquires Carrot Kitchen. The deal will help Chew, which aims to teach children about nutrition, expand across the Nordics. (EU Startups)
🇺🇸 🇮🇱 Farmers Business Network (FBN) and Greeneye Technology launch partnership. FBN is also leading an undisclosed investment for Greeneye’s precision weed spraying system. (AFN)
🇳🇱 🇫🇷 Restaurant tech startups Formitable and Zenchef merge. For now, each company will maintain their own brands and operations. (Silicon Canals)
Funds, grants & accelerators
🇬🇧 🇮🇪 Milltrust and EFF Ventures launch a £242 million Smart Protein Fund. The fund will look to scale startups developing cultivated and plant-based meat as well as other protein alternatives. (UKTN)
Other news
🇺🇸 Vertical farming startup Plenty is closing its South San Francisco facility. The company will shift all production to its Compton, California facility, though it will continue to have a retail presence in the Bay Area. (AFN)
🇪🇸 Delivery platform and dark store operator Glovo fined for breaking labor laws. The company must pay roughly $63 million for falsely classifying thousands of couriers as “self-employed.” (Yahoo)
🇮🇱 Aleph Farms becomes first cultivated meat company to gain kosher status. Israel’s chief rabbi, Rabbi David Baruch Lau, says consumers can eat steak cultivated from animal cells. (Green Queen)
🇸🇬 Food ordering startup Gobble shuts down. The service, started by former Deliveroo executives, cited low profit and lack of cashflow as reasons. (Deal Street Asia)
🇺🇸 Meati Foods announces alternative protein “mega ranch.” The company expects its new production facility to crank out mycelium products at “tens of millions of pounds” by late 2023. (Vegconomist)
🇺🇸 BioMar & Benson Hill form collaboration. The partnership will see Benson Hill’s “ultra-high protein” soy meal used for feed in fisheries. (Benson Hill)
🇮🇱 Seed genetics company BetterSeeds develops Cowpeas fit for mechanized harvesting. BetterSeeds plant these Cowpeas in the US in Spring 2023. (PR Newswire)
Sponsored
International Fresh Produce Association launches year 3 of its produce accelerator