In partnership with
#254
Hi there,
Solvable Syndicate, where I’m founding partner, just announced our investment in ALTR (in a $5M round led by Demeter and also joined by Suntory Global Spirits, Jeriko (Techmind), AZ Venture Capital Inc., FTW Ventures, Bluestein Ventures, and Xinomavro Ventures).
🍷 Why is ALTR exciting? They’re a U.S. startup that’s developing an advanced membrane technology that removes ethanol from wine — without compromising on taste. Think of it like dialysis for wine; selectively removing the ethanol while keeping the aroma intact.
🍇 This is a game-changer. Wineries are currently struggling with balancing two major trends; climate change is increasing the sugar content (and thus alcohol content) of wine grapes, while consumers — especially Millennials and Gen Zs — are asking for healthier alternatives (read: less or no alcohol).
🌎 The no/low-alcohol segment is underserved. Unlike alcohol-free beer, alcohol-free wine is often associated with poor quality. ALTR is working to change this. I hope it can eventually help lead to better nutrition and health outcomes worldwide.
(Btw, if you’re an accredited investor, you can apply to join Solvable).
This week's rundown:
🤑 Agrobiomics and Terrana Biosciences bags millions in funding to protect crops without chemical fertilizer
💶 Ÿnsect gets €8.6M injection from existing investors to stay operational throughout 2025
🦑 Plant-based octopus is back, thanks to Revo Foods
Let's go!
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💬 Conversation with Niklas Wallsargård of Improvin’
Niklas Wallsargård grew up on the countryside, surrounded by farming relatives and family friends, giving him a deep appreciation for agriculture early on. Years later, he helped build and scale a grain marketplace in the Nordics, which made him realize there was a strong need for better data infrastructure in the food value chain. He co-founded Improvin’ to help solve this issue, and just a few years in, the platform has already supported traceability and sustainability efforts across more than 500K tons of food, enough to feed 400K people annually. To learn more, read my full conversation with Niklas here.
Niklas Wallsargård, Improvin’
💰 Funding
🇺🇸 VC and bioinnovation venture builder Flagship Pioneering has launched Terrana Biosciences with a $50M initial investment, to develop RNA-based crop protection and crop enhancement technologies that can help e.g. cut the need for chemical inputs.
🇳🇱 Founteyn has closed a €13M ($15M) round. The company offers offices, SMEs, and the hospitality sector a system for freshly made trademarked drinks (hot, cold, still, or sparkling) through a capsule-based system, made in less than 15 seconds. This reduces packaging material by more than 80%.
🇩🇰 Agrobiomics has been awarded up to €7.5M ($8.8M) in blended financing from the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator program. The startup develops a nature-derived biomolecules technology that can boost crop resilience and productivity, in an environmentally friendly way. Agrobiomics’ is preparing to launch its first two products for soybean and tomato.
🇫🇷 Insect protein scaleup Ÿnsect, which raised over $600M before filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, has secured €8.6M ($10M) in bridge funding from existing investors to stay afloat through 2025, while laying off more than half of its workforce and pausing much of its Ÿnfarm facility.
🇺🇸 ALTR, which reduces the alcohol content of wine while preserving the flavor and mouthfeel, has raised $5M in a round led by Demeter and joined by Suntory Global Spirits, Jeriko (managed by Techmind), AZ Venture Capital Inc., Solvable Syndicate, FTW, Bluestein Ventures, and Xinomavro (full disclosure: I’m founding partner at Solvable, which invested in this round).
ALTR
🎙️ Investment Climate: Lawrence Pratt of ClearLeaf on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Lawrence Pratt, co-founder and president of ClearLeaf, a Costa Rica–based agtech startup developing non-toxic, broad-spectrum fungicides and bactericides. ClearLeaf recently closed a Seed series round with lead investor Hawthorne Food Ventures, a fund run by a family office out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The full episode can be found on Spotify and Apple.
Top three findings from this conversation:
18 Months of Persistent Process. The fundraising round took 18 months from start to close. " We were definitely not planning for 18 months, but we were planning for 12, and we had realistic expectations. We were at the time in a kind of interesting spot. Our market product was getting decent market acceptance in a couple of different markets. Still, our experience has been this strange, squishy middle when you're very early stage and you don't have any sales people who get all excited about your technology."
Fundraising Methodology: Global Mapping + Relentless Follow-Up. The team built a broad investor universe across the US and Europe, tracked progress in spreadsheets, and stayed in touch even with non-deploying funds. "It was just basically a lot of Excel spreadsheets, tracking who we had talked to and when we last spoke to them. Everybody who didn't slam the door in our face would rather say, ‘Hey, you're interesting. Let's talk more when we're in a better position.’ We just kept following up and following up."
Lead Investor Origin: Warmed-Up Cold Intro via Biz Dev. Hawthorne Food Ventures initially met Clear Leaf at World AgriTech in 2023. A London-based BD partner rekindled the connection via a referral from another fund. “We then re-met them in a more meaningful way, through a strategic connection that was brought to us by our business development arm, which is based in London. Then, we got into detailed discussions, and starting in 2023, we went through DD in the good first half of 2024 to bring us to a close of the last few months. ”
🧐 Noteworthy
📈 The World Health Organization is calling for countries to raise the prices of sugar-sweetened beverages, alcohol, and tobacco by 50% over the next 10 years through taxation, in an effort to help combat chronic public health problems. Industry groups are pushing back, citing a lack of evidence on health outcomes.
🐛 In Vilnius, Lithuania, fly larvae have been given the job of processing the 2,700 tons of food waste the city’s 607,000 residents put out for collection each year. This saves the city approximately €2M ($2.3M) annually.
💧 “In the Arizona desert, a farm raising fish raises questions about water use” — interesting read from the AP.
💶 Belgium-based early-stage investor Biotope Ventures has announced a €5M ($5.9M) first close of its €9M ($10.5M) target for its second fund, Biotope Ventures 2. The fund will invest in up to 30 early-stage biotech startups focused on challenges linked to planetary health.
🐙 Austrian plant-based seafood startup Revo Foods has relaunched its 3D-printed octopus product, The Kraken.
Revo Foods
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 HackVentures (🇪🇺) is hiring a Community Intern as well as an AI & Automation Assistant… ALTR (🇺🇸) is recruiting a Head of Commercialization and a Lab Technician.
🎤 Discover the Future of Food at ProVeg Incubator’s Demo Day — an online event on Sep 18, spotlighting 10 promising startups in the plant-based and fermentation-powered food tech space. Register for free here.
Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.
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🎲 Random Stuff
🥵 Europe has more heat deaths per year than the United States loses to gun deaths (h/t Nordic9).
✨ 125M living bioluminescent algae were used for the opening look at Iris Van Herpen’s recent fashion show (of course, this idea must have been stolen from the Squid scene in 2016 movie Sing).
Click the image for the full video
🧽 Since I’m on semi-vacation, I took the time to clean this road sign that the local municipality had neglected (civil society ftw!).
Quick trivia: What is 'Farthinder'?
I love you.
Daniel
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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Truth by Alex Ebert.
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