In partnership with
#253
Hi there,
If you’re thinking about going to 🔥THE HEAT at Harwell Science Campus in Oxford this September, the last ticket price reduction ends on July 10. I’m working hard to get some very innovative food and ag companies there, and hope to see you too!
Also, that same week, I’m co-hosting a Ripple at The Drop in Malmo together with Sarah Jones of Zero Carbon Capital on how to solve nitrous oxide emissions from fertilizers. Join us for that conversation!
What else? I hit a 2025 day streak on Duolingo which felt like a significant number somehow (maybe because we’re now closer to the year 2050 than 2000…). Just to be clear, mi espańol todavía es miserable.
This week's rundown:
💶 Proteine Resources nabs €9.5M to bring insect protein to pet feed market
💵 Halter bags $100M for virtual fencing solution for cattle
⚠️ Texas to put warning labels on food products containing many food additives
Let's go!
Sponsored content:
Inventory Software Made Easy—Now $499 Off
Looking for inventory software that’s actually easy to use?
inFlow helps you manage inventory, orders, and shipping—without the hassle.
It includes built-in barcode scanning to facilitate picking, packing, and stock counts. inFlow also integrates seamlessly with Shopify, Amazon, QuickBooks, UPS, and over 90 other apps you already use
93% of users say inFlow is easy to use—and now you can see for yourself.
Try it free and for a limited time, save $499 with code EASY499 when you upgrade.
Free up hours each week—so you can focus more on growing your business.
✅ Hear from real users in our case studies
🚀 Compare plans on our pricing page
💰 Funding
🇮🇪 Antler Bio, which uses epigenetics to boost dairy herd productivity, has closed a $4.3M round led by The First Thirty and joined by Endgame Capital as well as Generation-RE. The funding round brought Antler Bio’s total sum raised to $8.5M, including grants.
🇳🇿 Halter, which develops virtual fencing technology for livestock, has reached unicorn status after raising a A$155M Series D round led by Bond and joined by NewView Capital and existing backers.
🇧🇷 Symbiomics, which makes biostimulants (through gene edited microorganisms) that boost agricultural productivity as well as crops’ resilience to pests, has harvested a Series A round from e.g. Corteva Catalyst, Arar Capital, and The Yield Lab Latam.
🇵🇱 Proteine Resources has secured €9.5M ($11.1M) in blended funding led by the EIC Accelerator and joined by e.g. SMOK Ventures, Bitspiration BoosterVC and a number of other actors. The company breeds insects to help pet food companies replace animal beef with insect protein.
🇺🇸 Xrobotics, which develops pizza robots that currently cook 25,000 pies per month, has scored a $2.5M Seed round led by FinSight Ventures and joined by SOSV, MANA Ventures, and Republic Capital.
XRobotics
🎙️ Investment Climate: Andrew Leech of Bovotica on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Andrew Leech, CEO and Co-Founder of Bovotica. The Australian startup develops probiotic and prebiotic technologies that reduce methane and improve cattle productivity, and recently closed a $3.4M Seed round led by AgriZeroNZ. The full conversation can be found on Spotify and Apple.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Founder Sacrifices: Sold His House to Stay Afloat. Andrew quit his day job and funded himself through savings — ultimately selling his home to commit full-time and keep the company alive. “You have to have at least one person in the company going full time. If you're trying to raise a seed round and hold down even a part-time job, it gets very tricky. It got tough towards the end for me. I had to sell and ended up selling my house to keep myself going while we raised the seed round. But look, in the end, that was a risk that was really worth taking for me."
IP Deal with University: Exclusive License, Then Assignment. Bovotica initially licensed the IP from QUT with a clause for assignment post-raise — creating a win-win for both university and investors. “We've got a really good relationship with QUT and our process was we wanted to license the IP initially and then once we'd completed the seed round, get the university to assign that IP into the company. So that de-risked it for the university that if we can't raise the money, then it's only an exclusive license. But it also gives something to the investor as well that if we close the seed round, the IP is assigned to Bovotica, and Bovotica actually physically owns all the IP that it needs to put the deal forward.”
$9.4M Post-Money Valuation Grounded in PitchBook Comps. Bovotica used PitchBook data to benchmark valuations of comparable methane-reduction startups globally, arriving at a $6M pre-money valuation. “I was lucky enough to have access to a PitchBook subscription, so I pulled hundreds of reports out a PitchBook.The first thing the investors ask you, once they're interested is, ‘okay, what's the premoney you pull this number out’ — and if you've got data behind you from PitchBook to back that up, it makes the conversations go so much more easier.”
🧐 Noteworthy
📉 AgFunder News reports that AgriFoodTech startups raised $5.1B during the first half of 2025 over 557 deals, a 37% decline vs. the same period last year, and the lowest H1 total for AgriFoodTech funding since 2015. Axios echoes these findings, noting that FoodTech funding plunged to $1.4B across 202 deals during Q1 2025 (NB, not H1 2025), down nearly 50% year-over-year.
🏛 Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed a bill authorizing warning labels on food products that contain one or more of a long list of chemical additives. Examples include color additives, bleached and brominated flour, BHA and BHT, DATEM, Olestra, partially hydrogenated oil, potassium bromate and iodate. As Marion Nestle notes, food companies cannot formulate products for individual states — they will have to get rid of these additives nationwide to sell in Texas.
💶 Danish food waste mitigation company Too Good To Go is rumored to weigh a €200M-€300M funding round at a unicorn valuation. The company is active in 19 countries and has 100M users.
🌎 Climate change could cut yields of key crops by up to 120 calories per person per day for each 1C of heating, a new study in Nature claims.
🇨🇭 Starting in July, Swiss food labels must declare animal suffering on products such as meat and egg — covering practices such as e.g. castration or dehorning of cattle with anesthetic, and tail docking or teeth clipping for pigs without pain relief.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 HackVentures (🇨🇭) is hiring an Account Executive… Saveggy (🇸🇪) is recruiting a Marketing Coordinator… ALTR (🇺🇸) is looking for a Laboratory Technician… Chunk Foods (🇺🇸) has an open role for a Head of Marketing.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
🎲 Random Stuff
🫖 Can you grow tea in Scotland? Yes, there are legitimate tea farmers. But one entrepreneur claiming to sell Scottish tea just wasn’t the real deal.
🍓 Very cool video of massive indoor strawberry farm in the U.K.
📉 Bangladesh has reduced child mortality from 21% to 3% between 1979 and today.
⚖️ Denmark will amend its copyright law to give individuals legal ownership of their own body, facial features and voice, in an effort to tackle AI-generated deep fakes.
🐢 Goliath the tortoise just celebrated his first Father’s Day — at age 135.
After 135 years, Goliath finally came out of his shell… as a dad.
I love you.
Daniel
- - -
🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Dancing on My Own by Robyn
🤳 Follow me on LinkedIn and X.
👉 Did your brilliant friend forward this to you? Subscribe here.
✏️ Start your own Beehiiv newsletter.
📈 As of today, FoodTech Weekly has {{active_subscriber_count}} subscribers, of which 63 are Premium. Please join them.
Sponsored content:
AI native CRM for the next generation of teams
Powerful, flexible, and intuitive to use, Attio is the CRM for the next-generation of teams.
Sync your email and calendar, and Attio instantly builds your CRM—enriching every company, contact, and interaction with actionable insights in seconds.
Join fast growing teams like Flatfile, Replicate, Modal, and more.