Hi there,

In today’s issue, Erik Byrenius of Mudcake VC reflects on a missed pre-seed bet and the lesson: trust exceptional founders early. Plus: funding rounds in precision fermentation, insect protein, and aeroponics; tips from Agros’ Max Nelen on fundraising in tough markets; and big moves from Mars and the EU in sustainable food. Also: Ocado’s farming flop, luxury fruit, and cool cows.

Let's go!

What’s one company (in any industry) you didn’t invest in, but wish you had?

"Not sure if I can mention names, but I think of a startup that we passed on in pre-seed because the tech was too early and the go-to-market unclear. A year later, they had hit early traction, blew past our expectations on the tech side and raised from a strong syndicate.

What hurts isn’t missing the mark on timing – that happens. It’s that the founder and CEO was exceptional, we saw it, and we still didn’t follow our gut. We let the ambiguity of the market distract us from the clarity of the person. It’s still too early to tell if that company will succeed or not, but I nevertheless think it was a mistake that I try to learn from: in pre-seed, bet on the edge and the energy. Find the outlier. You can’t spreadsheet your way into conviction."

So many insightful reflections from Erik Byrenius, Founding Partner at Mudcake — check out the full conversation here.

🇺🇸🇦🇺 Eclipse Ingredients, which aims to produce high-value ingredients such as lactoferrin via precision fermentation, has emerged from stealth with AUD $7M ($4.5M) in funding from AgFunder, Australia’s Food and Beverage Accelerator (FaBA), and strategic angel investors.

🇮🇳 Loopworm, which produces insect-based aquafeed and pet food using silkworms, has harvested $3.25M in Pre-Series A funding from WaterBridge Ventures and Enrission India Capital.

🇪🇸 ODOS has bagged €680K ($790K) in a round led by dairy cooperative CAPSA FOOD (Grup Central Lechera Asturiana), Angels Capital, Tech Transfer Agrifood Oficial by CLAVE. The startup allows e.g. cooperatives and food companies to plan and implement farm-level and supply chain decarbonization strategies across Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.

🇬🇧 Sun Bear Biofuture has been awarded a £375K ($500K) grant from Innovate UK to explore using British Sugar’s sidestreams as feedstock for the startup’s production of sustainable replacements for tropical fats and oils.

🇮🇳 Controlled environment agriculture company Eeki has raised $7M from Sixth Sense Ventures to expand its aeroponics farm operations across India.

💲 U.S. food giant Mars plans to invest $250M in sustainable agriculture (e.g. digital tools for farmers, remote sensing and satellites), circular packaging packaging (e.g. compostable plastics), and low-carbon ingredients (e.g. plant-based proteins) via its new Mars Sustainability Investment Fund.

💶 The European Commission has launched a €350M ($405M) ‘Strategy for European Life Sciences’, a roadmap aiming to use science and biotech to change how Europe produces and consumes food — and central to the plan is advancing biomass and precision fermentation.

😬 Ocado is facing a potential £21.7M ($29M) loss after U.K. vertical farming company Jones Food, which it backed, fell into administration.

🚚 What would it take to electrify ag trucking? Good piece from Offrange.

📉 Funding into European FoodTech companies declined by almost 20% in H1 2025 to €474M ($550M), while the wider tech sector saw a 23% increase in funding, according to Dealroom. The same trend is observed by DigitalFoodLab, which says that global AgriFoodTech startups raised $6.4B in H1 2025, 24% less than last year, and that primarily early-stage startups are affected — bringing the FoodTech ecosystem back to 2015 levels of funding.

👨🏻‍💻 Saveggy (🇸🇪) is hiring a Marketing Coordinator.

🙋‍♀️ From Özgül Tezgel, PhD: “I'm currently pursuing an Executive MBA at NEOMA Business School in France and seeking a company or startup in the sustainable food space, particularly in alternative proteins, food biotech, or novel ingredient development, to collaborate on a real-life capstone project. I bring a PhD in Polymer Science with 10+ years of industry experience, including scale-up, formulation, regulatory, and CMC strategy across biotech applications. My capstone will explore an innovation or business challenge, ideally aligned with scaling sustainable ingredients (e.g., microbial oils, precision fermentation, plant-based proteins), process optimization in food production, regulatory strategy and go-to-market planning for novel food or nutraceutical ingredients, and sustainability-driven product development. I'm looking to work with a well-established company or growth-stage startup open to sharing a current challenge or opportunity that I can help analyze and solve while preserving confidentiality and adding real strategic value. The project runs from September 2025 to March 2026, and collaboration can be remote, flexible, and non-binding. Contact me via LinkedIn or email.”

Want to share some FoodTech news/project with other FoodTech Weekly subscribers? Hit reply.

🥈 The President of Finland just competed in a triathlon under an anonymous name — and came in second.

💸 The rise of luxury fruit — from the $11,000 Ruby Roman grapes auction in Japan to a $14 six-pack of strawberries to the $395 Costa Rican pineapple. Quick read from The Economist.

🌡 How to keep cows cool in a warming world (Financial Times).

​I love you.
Daniel

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