The Week in AgriFoodTech: Local Bounti lands $145m, Momofuku Goods bags $17.5m, Vow’s ‘mammoth’ meatball

This week, indoor farming startup Local Bounti raised additional funding, as did the Momofuku restaurant group’s spinoff company, Momofuku Goods. Indoor mushroom startup Smallhold expanded thanks to a retail partnership, and cultivated meat company Vow unveiled a rather mammoth surprise for the alt-protein world.

Foodtech funding

🇺🇸 Momofuku Goods, a packaged foods brand spinoff from restaurant chain Momofuku, raises $17.5 million. The Series A round led by Sidhi Capital will fuel team and product portfolio expansion. (Food Dive)

🇨🇦 STEER closes $18 million investment for its digital restaurant supply chain business. The company will use the funds to grow and further develop its subscription-based and on-demand service offerings. (Businesswire)

🇦🇺 Cauldron raises A$10.5 million ($7 million) seed round led by Main Sequence and Horizons Ventures. Cauldron will scale a manufacturing platform enabling its partners to produce high-value ingredients via precision fermentation. (AFN)

🇳🇱 EV Biotech secures €4.5 million ($4.9 million) in seed funding to “supercharge” fermentation development. The Future Food Fund led the round. (EV Biotech)

🇬🇧 Extracellular bags $1.9 million on Vevolution to help companies scale up cultivated meat. Big Idea Ventures and others also supported the fundraise. (Vevolution)

🇮🇹 B2B food procurement platform Quisto raises €800,000 ($871,000) in pre-seed funding to scale. Investors included an Italian Family Office in the food industry, StartupGym and some angels. (EU Startups)

Agtech funding

🇺🇸 Local Bounti lands $145 million. The raise comes via an amendment to its credit facility agreements with Cargill and a sale-leaseback deal with a real estate firm. (Vertical Farm Daily)

🇩🇰 Agreena lands €46 million ($50 million) Series B for its soil carbon program. Germany’s HV Capital led the round with participation from new investors including AENU and Anthemis. (AFN)

🇬🇧 Precision ag startup Permia Sensing secures £250,000 ($310,000) pre-seed funding from Jenson Funding Partners. Permia Sensing is currently testing its solution in corporate plantations in Sri Lanka. (Tech.eu)

M&A, IPOs & partnerships

🇺🇸 Boomitra teams with Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA) to launch a soil carbon project in East Africa. The project will help farmers adopt climate smart agricultural practices and connect them to carbon markets. (AFN)

🇯🇵 Osaka University, Shimadzu, Itoham Yonekyu, Toppan, and SIGMAXYZ establish “the future creation consortium for cultured meat.” The consortium will focus on educating the world about cultivated meat. (Toppan)

🇺🇸 Smallhold expands with Sprouts partnership. The company’s indoor-grown mushrooms will be available at the retailer’s locations in California, Arizona and Nevada. (Perishable News)

🇮🇳 🇹🇼 Food delivery giant Zomato partners with battery-swapping firm Gogoro. The companies aim to increase electric vehicle adoption among Zomato’s delivery partners. (Tech in Asia)

🇺🇸 Restaurant reservation platform OpenTable partners with ChatGPT to give users restaurant recommendations. The plug-in is being tested by a few consumers in the US and Canada. (Restaurant Dive)

Funds, grants & accelerators

🌍 EIT Food launches Regional Innovation Scheme (RIS) Open Innovation Call for Central and Eastern Europe. A total of €1.5 million is available those addressing issues in agrifood supply chains in this region. (EIT Food)

Other news

🇺🇸 Cultivated meat startup New Age Eats makes “painful decision” to shut down. The closure comes after the company failed to secure funding to complete work on its pilot facility, amongst other things. (AFN)

🇮🇱 Melodea opens first pilot production facility for plant-based food packaging. The company aims to help food manufacturers drastically reduce plastic waste. (Bakery and Snacks)

🇨🇦 PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) sets deadline for offers on plant protein processor Merit Functional Foods. Potential bidders have until April 21 to submit an offer, after the company was placed in receivership. (AFN)

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Gene-edited food development now legal in England. Supporters say the new law will speed up crop development; critics warn of “disaster” for food production and the environment. (BBC)

🇺🇸 Myodenovo emerges from stealth to create whole cuts of meat starting with filet mignon. The company calls its process “scalable, cost effective, and designed for regulatory approval from day one.” (AFN)

🇧🇷 Agrotools expands its agribusiness marketplace to North America. The company says this is a key pillar of its growth strategy. (Global Newswire)

🇮🇹 Italy proposes banning cultivated meat. The country’s right-wing government has backed the bill, citing “Italy’s prized Mediterranean diet” as motivation. (BBC)

🇨🇳 Starbucks launches “Starbucks Curbside” to serve customers on the go. The service is already available in 150 stores in Beijing and Shanghai and is set to hit over 1000 stores over the course of next year. (Pandaily)

🇳🇱 Dutch Supreme Court upholds ruling made by Amsterdam Court of Appeal stating delivery drivers for Deliveroo were employees. The food delivery startup had in 2018 changed its terms, to treat drivers as self-employed workers. (Silicon Canals)

🇬🇧 New Planet Tracker report says up to $350 billion needed to slow climate impacts on food systems. The report outlines six interventions which could reduce food system GHG emissions by 60%. (Edie)

🇦🇺 Cultivated meat producer Vow revives flesh of extinct mammoths to prove potential of cultured meat. Mammoths were chosen to symbolize diversity loss as the company wants to start a conversation on what future meat alternatives could look like. (The Guardian)