- FoodTech Weekly
- Posts
- FoodTech Weekly #245 by Daniel S. Ruben
FoodTech Weekly #245 by Daniel S. Ruben
News on FoodTech, food, and society
Daniel S. Ruben
May 09, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
In partnership with
#245
Hi there,
I’m looking forward to seeing you in Lausanne next week for HackSummit (with 850 founders, investors, and ecosystem players in Climate and Food, the event is pretty much sold out).
Also, not sure who makes these visuals, but whatever.
This week's rundown:
💵 $100M in fresh funding for embattled Beyond Meat
🤑 Hoofprint Biome bags $15M Series A to help block cow methane emissions
😵 WeightWatchers files for bankruptcy as Ozempic-style drugs gain ground
Let's go!
Sponsored content:
Get Over $6K of Notion Free with Unlimited AI
Startups move fast. That's why thousands of startups worldwide trust Notion as their connected, customizable workspace. In one place, you can organize, plan, and execute—whether you're managing investor outreach, documenting key decisions, or scaling operations.
Apply now to get up to 6 months of Notion with unlimited AI free, a $6,000+ value. Access AI's limitless potential right inside Notion and build your company with one powerful tool.
💰 Funding
🇺🇸 Beyond Meat has secured $100M from Unprocessed Foods, an affiliate of Ahimsa Foundation, which focuses ‘on advocating for plant-based diets.’ The company will use the funding to pay down debt.
🇫🇮 Foodiq has raised €10M ($11M) in new funding, led by investors Saeid Binzagr and Mathias Kamprad. The company has developed a multi-layer cooker technology which gives more flexibility and efficiency when producing dairy and dairy-style products. Foodiq will use the new funding to further expand into Asia and North America, and scale the team.
🇬🇧 Platter has banked a €411K ($461M) pre-seed round joined by e.g. Startup Wise Guys and a group of angel investors. The startup offers an all-in-one wholesale food platform that connects buyers and sellers, which the company says saves time, boosts sales, and helps cut food waste.
🇺🇸 Hoofprint Biome has bagged a $15M Series A round, for their novel enzyme-based feed additive that reduces methane emissions from cows by targeting their rumen microbiome. The round was led by SOSV and joined by e.g. Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Fellows, and existing investors.
🇺🇸 Uviquity has emerged from stealth with $6.6M in Seed funding, led by Emerald Development Managers and joined by AgFunder and MANN+Hummel. The company develops solid-state far-UVC semiconductor light sources to deliver safe, chemical-free disinfection for air, food, and water applications. In essence, they disinfect pathogens in the field and supply chain by using light.
Uviquity
🇧🇪 Rainbow Crops, which develops climate-resilient crops through it’s AI-powered platform has received an investment from PINC. The technology allows researchers to design and test targeted genetic variations at scale, to improve crop drought tolerance, heat resilience, and input efficiency.
🇺🇸 Robotic personal chef startup Posha has scooped up $8M in funding, led by Accel. The company claims its kitchen robot can save up to 70% of daily kitchen time by preparing personalized meals with minimal user input.
🇺🇸 FoodHealth Co has closed a $7.5M Series A round, co-led by Reach Capital and Ulu Ventures, and joined by e.g. Supply Change Capital and ReThink Food. The company develops the FoodHealth Score, which helps consumers make better food choices and retailers curate smarter shelves.
🎙️ Investment Climate: Matt Wampler of ClearCOGS on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Matt Wampler, Co-Founder and CEO of ClearCOGS. The company builds a platform that helps restaurants reduce food waste. In the conversation, Matt opens up about the mistakes he made early in the fundraising process, how honest conversations rather than pitch decks moved the needle, and why founders need to stop chasing investor approval and start building undeniable value. ClearCOGS recently raised $3.8M led by Closed Loop Partners and joined by Myriad Venture Partners and Level Up Ventures.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Don’t Build for Investors—Build for Customers. ClearCOGS succeeded by focusing relentlessly on customer outcomes, not pitch decks. Ironically, this is what helped them eventually win over their lead investor. We basically said, ‘Hey, we're gonna spend our time not trying to build for investors, but we're gonna focus on the business, focus on our clients with the full understanding that if we take care of our clients and grow the business, the fundraising will take care of itself.’
Strategic Investors Can Fill Your Blind Spots. The team sought partners who could complement their restaurant and tech expertise—especially in sustainability, which played a key role in the round. ‘My background is all restaurants. My co-founder's background is all technology. We happened to be doing this activity, which really made a difference in the sustainability world. Something that we had very little knowledge of. So we looked at this investor as a great leg of the stool to help us move forward.’
You Don’t Need Everyone to Like You—Just the Right Ones. Matt embraced the idea that fundraising is not about being universally liked but about resonating deeply with the right investor. ‘Your job is to go get 1 in 10 to really like you and believe in you… The eights and nines out of tens don’t invest.’
🧐 Noteworthy
🏳 Mycelium maker Meati Foods will be sold for just $4M, after having raised $450M since its founding. What went wrong? Steven Finn of Siddhi Capital wrote a short insightful reflection on LinkedIn which has garnered 100s of likes and comments.
🍫 As Snaxshot noted, maybe this is the only time Hershey’s has leveraged its influence for good — the company estimates the U.S. tariffs will cost them upwards of $200M, and is asking for an exemption, as cacao cannot be grown in the U.S.. Will alt chocolate startups gain ground in the new environment?
👷 Planet Farms plans to invest more than £25M ($33M) to build a new UK-based vertical farm, in what it describes as the biggest single investment into the vertical farming industry.
🪦 WeightWatchers has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to eliminate its billion-dollar debt burden. The company has struggled, not least because of new weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.
🌄 Almendra has developed a ‘night interruption’ lighting technology for open-field agriculture that boosts crop yields by using LED-equipped irrigation rights to manipulate crop flowering (h/t ClimateHack).
Almendra
🚫 The Swiss Supreme Court has banned animal-specific terms like chicken and pork on vegan product labels.
🏆 Out of 1,000 nominated organizations and companies, 6 groundbreaking initiatives (Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, Astungkara Way, NitroCapt, Pride on our Plates, Semion, and Virtual Irrigation Academy) have made it to the final stage of the $2M Food Planet Prize, the world’s largest environmental prize. The winner will be announced on June 13, 2025.
🤝 U.K. alt protein pet food brand THE PACK has been acquired by Italian pet food producer Prefera Petfood SRL.
🔗 Molecular farming startup Moolec Science, which e.g. has developed a pork-producing soybean — will merge with Argentinian Bioceres Group and two other companies.
🕵 A new study conducted at the Stanford University dining halls shows that a 25% reduction in spoon size led to an 18% decrease in meat served per day, without any drop in customer satisfaction. However, a 50% spoon size reduction triggered a compensatory effect, where diners ate more meat at dinner to compensate for the ‘lost’ consumed meat at lunch (h/t Sophie Attwood, Ph.D)
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Nosh.bio (🇩🇪) is looking for a B2B Sales Support Specialist… The Rockefeller Foundation (🇺🇸) is recruiting a Program Associate, Food.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
Sponsored content:
Stay Informed, Without the Noise.
Your inbox is full of news. But how much of it is actually useful? The Daily Upside delivers sharp, insightful market analysis—without the fluff. Free, fast, and trusted by 1M+ investors. Stay ahead of the market in just a few minutes a day.
🎲 Random Stuff
🎂 A Swiss-Italian team has unveiled the ‘RoboCake’, an edible and biodegradable robotic wedding cake that features dancing gummy bears and chocolate-encased edible batteries that power LED candles.
🗽 New Yorkers in slow motion:
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Roi by Videoclub, Adèle Castillon, and Mattyeux.
👉 Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.
✏️ Start your own Beehiiv newsletter.
📈 As of today, FoodTech Weekly has 3,294 subscribers, of which 63 are Premium. Please join them.