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Hi there,
1️⃣ Thanks to all of you who filled out Hack’s Global Impact Survey. I picked a name (using an online random name picker) from all who submitted screenshots, and (drumroll) Guillermo O. will get a copy of Amanda Little’s book The Fate of Food. The rest of you can still take the survey and get nice perks from Hack!
2️⃣ I’ll cover EAT Stockholm Food Forum for FoodTech Weekly in Stockholm in October. It’s one of the world’s most important food policy events. If you want me to ask anything in particular to folks like Dr. Gunhild Stordalen, Dr. Johan Rockström, Ertharin Cousin or anyone else there, just let me know.
3️⃣ Later in October, I’ll be going to Anuga in Cologne; with 160,000 visitors it’s the largest food fair in the world. I just booked my trip. Tell me you’re flying a German airline without telling me you’re flying a German airline:
This week's rundown:
💵 Several funding rounds for soil analytics startups
📉 Investments in AgriFoodTech fall to 2015 levels
🎒 New record for school meal coverage in emerging markets.
Let's go!
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💰 Funding
🇲🇾 Seadling, which produces functional ingredients from fermented seaweed has reeled in $1M in Seed funding co-led by AgFunder, The Yield Lab Asia Pacific, Toyo Seikan Group, Katapult Ocean, and KUL Loesningar 3. It will now open a second processing facility in Malaysia.
🇺🇸 SoilAction has bagged $5.25M in Seed funding led by R7Partners and joined by e.g. Climactic VC and Ponderosa Ventures. The startup has developed a tractor-mounted device that can analyze soil nutrients in real-time, meaning the farmer can decide e.g. where to fertilize (and not).
🇬🇧 SugaROx has secured €1.1M ($1.3M) in Seed round extension from e.g. The Mosaic Company, Future Planet Capital, and Regenerate Ventures. The company develops and produces a biostimulant that helps crops grow faster and bigger, and be more resilient to stress.
🇺🇸 TerraBlaster has extended its $3M pre-seed round with another million, bringing the total to $4M. It was led by Khosla Ventures. The company can ‘blast’ the soil with lasers, breaking molecules into ions, allowing the company to read soil nutrients instantly.
🇦🇺 Foodini has made public a previously unannounced $1.8M round raised in 2024 from Untapped Ventures, GFR Fund, MVP Capital Partners, Square Root Holdings, Solvable Syndicate and a number of angel investors. The company is developing an AI-powered ingredient and dietary data layer to enable personalized menus, tagging menus for over 150 allergens, diets and preferences. This, in turn, allows guests and servers to instantly see what they can order.
🎙️ Investment Climate: Paul Shapiro of The Better Meat Co. on how to get funded in 2025
This week, Alex Shandrovsky met with Paul Shapiro, CEO and Co-Founder of The Better Meat Co, who just closed a $31M Series A round in one of the toughest markets alternative protein has ever seen. Paul shares how the company weathered years of IP litigation, kept advancing with patents and regulatory wins, and built long-term trust with investors like Steve Jurvetson (Future Ventures) and Rob Reid (Resilience Reserve) — relationships nurtured since 2021 that finally culminated in a Series A lead in 2025. He breaks down The Better Meat Co.’s pragmatic strategy: positioning as an ingredient supplier to the $1T meat industry rather than a branded CPG, focusing on hybrid meat products that reduce animal use at scale, and pioneering cost-competitive mycoprotein through continuous fermentation.
Top three findings from this conversation:
Long-Term Investor Relationships Pay Off. The Better Meat Co. co-leads (Future Ventures & Resilience Reserve) were cultivated for years, with initial support via a convertible note. “Bruce Friedrich from The Good Food Institute, many years ago, probably around 2021, introduced me to Rob Reid … he then introduced me to Steve Jurvetson. They did do a convertible note, which was smaller than what we just did, but they did a convertible note at the end of 2021, and then they made their series A investment in 2025."
Transparency and Education Are Critical in Board Meetings. The Better Meat Co. uses board time to expose challenges and teach investors technical fundamentals.. " We're highly transparent. We do not mask any bad things. We never wanted to have a board meeting where we're just merely informing the board of what we're doing, and that's it. It's not our duty merely to inform them. We want to solicit their ideas; they are there not just to govern the company, they're there to help and guide what we are doing."
Balancing Mission and Pragmatism. As a long-time vegan, Paul faced criticism for pursuing hybrid meat but stresses pragmatic impact. " I had people criticizing me in podcasts and blogs, unfriending me on Facebook over this. I've been a vegan for about 32 years, and I'd be thrilled if more people wanted to eat that way. But I'm also a pragmatist, and I recognize again that meat demand is going up, not down. People like to live in a bubble and think that the world is going the way that they want it to. In reality, it is going in the opposite way. Meat demand is up; it's at an all-time high."
The conversation can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
🧐 Noteworthy
🍫 Nestlé has developed a new method to squeeze 30% more out of the cacao fruit.
🗺 GFI has launched a refreshed design of their alt protein ecosystem map, and it’s pretty cool; it makes it easy to visualize geographical hot spots of alt protein across industry, academia and more.
📈 In 2022, 418M children received school meals, an increase of 30M since early 2020, Devex reports. In the same period, global investment in school meals increased by $5B. Experts describe it as ‘probably the most important development success story in recent years.’
😱 ‘2025 – the year that Silicon Valley and AgriFoodTech went from “It’s complicated” to “Hasta la vista”’ - good observations from Walt Duflock.
📉 With only $6.4B raised in the first half of 2025, AgriFoodTech investment declined 24% vs. the same period last year — and the number of deals were down 30%, especially impacting early-stage startups. The AgriFoodTech ecosystem is back to 2015 levels of funding, DigitalFoodLab notes.
🌍 News from the FoodTech Weekly community
👨🏻💻 Rabo Investments Ventures (🇳🇱) is hiring an Investments Associate.
🎤 Still undecided if you’re going to attend 🔥THE HEAT in Oxford in mid-September? Use the code DANIELFRIEND for a 20% discount.
👨⚖️ I’ll be a jury member for the “Company of the Year Award” at FoodTech Forum 2025 in Malmö, Sweden on Nov 18. This award celebrates a standout company driving innovation, scalability, market potential, and real impact on the food system. Register here, it’s always a great event.
🙋♂️Seeking new role: “Co-founder/CEO of Proteme, an AgTech startup developing green alternatives to chemicals on fruits and vegetables, and former consultant in pharma, luxury, and consumer goods. With a background in agronomic engineering, I led Proteme’s growth—managing operations, finance, and commercial strategy—while securing pre-seed/seed funding. Recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 and Greentech Innovation award winner, I also secured major public grants (France 2030, Bpifrance). Leveraging deep expertise in the deeptech and innovation ecosystem, I am now seeking a high-impact operational role (Chief of Staff, Director of Operations) in an impactful scale-up within agronomy, foodtech, or biotech/health to drive strategic and operational growth. Reach out to connect!”
*****
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🎲 Random Stuff
🍺 Beer spas are now a thing — where you can soak in brewer’s yeast, hops, barley malt, hot water, and sometimes a little beer.
💧Michelin restaurant La Popote has launched what is said to be the UK’s only bottled water menu, with prices ranging from £5 ($7) to £19 ($26) for a bottle, the most expensive being The Palace of Vidago from Portugal.
👀 Spotted in Canada by FTW reader Carina Sølling Damm:
🍅 The world’s largest food fight took place in Buñol, Spain earlier this week when 20,000 people hurled 120 tons of overripe, inedible tomatoes on each other, during the Tomatina event.
🤩 From Our World in Data: Each bar represents the estimated number of lives saved by a specific medical innovation, with the bars increasing in length from left to right to indicate more lives saved (please note that food/ag innovations are #1 and #3 on the list, saving more lives than most other innovations):
🐾 Corgi Race Vilnius 2025 also took place a few days ago, with lots of competitions, including a 25-meter sprint “to determine which fluffball has the biggest explosive power.”
absolutely corgi-ous
I love you.
Daniel
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