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Hi there,
It’s Friday again. Wherever you are, I hope you’ll have a great weekend.
This week's rundown:
🔗 Libre Foods brings home the bacon; gets acquired
🐮 Future Foods of Brazil banks funding to bring animal-free milk to market
🐣 How in-ovo sexing may save hundreds of millions of chicks from culling
Let's go!
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💬 Conversation with Matteo Leonardi of Grey Silo Ventures
“Our job requires jumping from case to case quickly and adaptively, as we may spend hours trying to get up to speed on a sub vertical in synbio one day and wake up to read scientific publications on plant breeding the next. Most think that this is the most thrilling side of VC, but the best part for me is the human-human interactions that go beyond learning a new concept or understanding a new technology.”
I just interviewed Matteo Leonardi, Investment Manager at Grey Silo Ventures, for Solvable’s newsletter on why his interest in food cultures led him to study food science and eventually work as a AgriFoodTech VC, what he wants to invest in next — and the company he felt FOMO not getting to invest in. Make sure to subscribe for future posts📲.
Matteo Leonardi, Investment Manager at Grey Silo Ventures
💰 Funding
🇳🇱 Doktar, which uses digital products and AI for real-time monitoring, decision support, and sustainability efforts, has harvested €7.5M ($8.8M) in funding, led by The European Circular Bioeconomy Fund and Pymwymic, and backed by e.g. Diffusion Capital Partners.
🇧🇷 Future Cow has closed a R$ 4.86M ($0.9M) funding round from e.g. Captable, FAPEST, and Embrapii; the company produces animal-free milk through precision fermentation, has 18 MOUs with dairy companies, and aims to license its tech commercially by 2026.
🇫🇮 Hailia, which turns waste fish parts (e.g. heads, fins, and frames) into ready-to-eat food products, has reeled in €1.75M ($2M) in funding, joined by Holdix and Ikorni Invest.
🇨🇦 Future Fields has secured an $8M Series A round co-led by Amplify Capital, BDC’s Climate Tech Fund, and R7 Partners, with support from other investors. The startup leverages genetically engineered fruit flies to produce high-value proteins.
🇧🇪 Koppie emerged from stealth with a ‘significant’ pre-seed round backed by Nucleus Capital, Mudcake, Rockstart, and a bunch of impact and FMCG angels. The company has patent-pending fermentation and roasting tech that transform pulses into ‘beans’ that can be ground and brewed like traditional coffee, which addresses industry challenges with skyrocketing prices and supply shocks.
Koppie
🎙️ Investment Climate: Damilare Odumosu and Rillwan Shokunbi of CropMind on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Damilare Odumosu and Rillwan Shokunbi, co-founders of CropMind. The Canadian startup uses computer vision to help permanent crop growers — like apple and grape farmers — accurately estimate yield, and raised $500K from New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and BKL Capital.
The conversation can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Cold Outreach with High Empathy and Research. They contacted farmers through cold emails, calls, and in-person visits — always customized based on real research and communicated with humility. " We could lay our hands on email, quote, calling, going to the orchard. First, do your research about that particular firm. Even though it's a cold email, try to say one or two things you know about their farm."
Academic Origins: From Master’s Project to Real Business. The venture started as a Master’s thesis in Technology Management at the University of New Brunswick and evolved into a commercial product. " We initially started working on this from the university, and we've done a bit of extensive research at that point. So after university, we started to think of how to make it much more real, and we had to quit our jobs, start working on this."
Valuation Grounded in Traction. While it was a SAFE/pre-seed round (not priced), they supported valuation with early product-market fit, LOIs, and real usage metrics. “ We had to do some estimates based on certain activities within the organization. For instance, we have a product that was raised. So these are like more qualitative and quantitative information that we used to support the estimates.”
🧐 Noteworthy
🐣 Egg company Kipster has successfully implemented in-ovo sexing at their Nebraska facility. The technology enables producers to select and remove male embryos before developing. Observers believe mandatory in-ovo secing would spare 300M+ day-old male chicks from being culled annually, in the U.S. alone.
🤝 Spanish mycelium meat startup Libre Foods, known for its mushroom bacon, has been acquired by Swiss fermentation manufacturer Planetary.
📉 Cultivated pork startup Clever Carnivore says it has cut its culture media costs (which the cultivated meat is grown in) to $0.07, aiming to launch its products in the U.S. by 2026 provided that regulatory approval is granted.
🚯 Zero-waste restaurant Baldío in Mexico City, open since 2014, has no trash bins. Less than 1% of food is composted and no single-use materials are used. Inspiring read.
📈 Why greenhouses are having a moment.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Zero Wave (🇪🇺) is hiring a Business Development Manager – Alternative Proteins… Mycolever (🇩🇪) is looking for a Technical Assistant (gn) Bioprocess Engineering…The Rockefeller Foundation (🇺🇸) is recruiting a Project Director, Regenerative School Meals.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🍰 Making tiramisu in strange places.
🥚 The Great Egg Heist; 280K eggs disappeared from a big U.S. egg producer — then came the ransom note.
🥱 Meet the members of the Dull Men’s Club.
😱 New nightmare unlocked: Local authorities in Czechia have arrested a 22-year old who together with two family members practiced self-taught dentistry, without a license or expertise.
🌲 Swiss scientists at Empa have developed glow-in-the-dark wood by infusing it with bioluminescent fungi, creating a sustainable, electricity-free lighting alternative (h/t ClimateHack)
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Instant Repeater ‘99 by The Soundtrack Of Our Lives.
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