Growth:

🇨🇦 Canada — Good Protein raises CA$128M (~$90M) [CPG]
Montreal’s Good Protein makes plant-based protein shakes with 21g of protein (along with fiber and micronutrients) from yellow peas and golden flaxseed. The round supports product development, retail expansion, and international growth.
Lead: SEMCAP Food & Nutrition
Follows: Farm Credit Canada, Roynat Equity Partners, Fondaction, Del Monte Corporation

🇮🇳 India — altM raises $10.3M Series A [Biotech]
Bengaluru’s altM turns crop residue such as sugarcane bagasse and rice straw into specialty chemicals and biomaterials. Funding goes toward expanding manufacturing, R&D, and commercialization.
Lead: Rainmatter by Zerodha and Mela Ventures (new investors)
Follows: Omnivore, Theia Ventures, Aureolis Ventures, Spectrum Impact; VC Grid and angels

🇨🇴 Colombia — Celes raises $5M Series A [Supply Chain]
Barranquilla-based Celes develops AI-powered software to optimize retail inventory management and product distribution. It runs across 8,500+ stores in eight countries, and produces about 55M demand forecasts a day.
Lead: SP Ventures
Follows: Fulcrum Global Capital, 30N Ventures, Taram Capital

🇨🇳 China — Cardinal Biocraft raises RMB 50M Pre-A [Biotech]
Cardinal Biocraft engineers yeast to make nutrition ingredients. Its astaxanthin is already on the market, with pilot-scale costs below chemical synthesis and orders above $1.3M. Omega-3s are next.
Lead: Not specified
Follows: Hefei Chantou Guozheng and Chantou Big Health seed fund, Greater Bay Area Entrepreneurship Guidance Fund, Shanghai Rongquan Yuanji Fund, Guannan equity and talent funds

🇳🇿 New Zealand — Aimer Farming raises NZ$3M (~$1.7M) Seed [Agtech]
Hamilton-based Aimer Farming develops software that uses smartphone and satellite data to optimize pasture management and livestock feeding. Its platform is used on 800+ dairy farms in New Zealand, Chile and the UK.
Lead: Cultivate Ventures, Erbacher Food Family, Pacific Channel, Agnition (co-leads)
Follows: Antipodean Capital, Flying Kiwi Angels, Enterprise Angels, Angel HQ

🇺🇸 USA — Scoops raises $2M Seed [CPG]
Founded by Elizabeth Lane, who worked at Magic Spoon and Huel, Scoops makes a high-protein peanut powder with 27g of protein and 5g of fiber per serving.
Lead: Weil Family Office (James Weil)
Follows: Undisclosed - the company’s ingredient supplier and its manufacturer

🇮🇩 Indonesia — AquaBloom raises Seed (undisclosed) [Crop Inputs]
Jakarta’s AquaBloom turns Indonesian seaweed into biostimulants for crops and additives for animal feed. It has conducted 40+ field trials on about 30 crops, reporting yield gains of 20–30%.
Lead: Spiral Ventures
Follows: Potato Impact Partners, Archipelago VC and angels

🇨🇦 Canada — PONO Wellness raises Seed (undisclosed) [CPG]
Vancouver’s PONO Wellness develops nootropic drink mixes designed to support mental energy, focus, and cognition. Its first product is expected to launch in early 2027.
Lead: Meehan Family Investments
Follows: Not disclosed

🇷🇴 Romania — Hambar raises €250K Seed [Supply Chain]
Hambar connects small Romanian food producers with shoppers. It launched with 250+ producers and 4,000+ products.
Lead: Vest Ventures (its first seed deal)
Follows: N/A — single investor

🇺🇸 USA — Kodiact raises $2.5M Pre-Seed [Supply Chain]
Chicago’s Kodiact develops an AI-powered procurement platform that helps food, beverage, and consumer goods manufacturers anticipate raw material price volatility and optimize sourcing decisions.
Lead: Supply Change Capital
Follows: Green Circle Foodtech Ventures, Velocity Catalyst

🇮🇳 India — Solgram raises $1M+ Pre-Seed [Supply Chain]
Gurugram’s Solgram sells fresh produce, dairy, meat, seafood, and gourmet groceries, managing sourcing, storage, and delivery through its own cold chain. The funding will support cold-chain expansion, technology development, and growth across India's National Capital Region.
Lead: DSG Consumer Partners and Saama Capital (co-leads)
Follows: Kapil Chopra

🇬🇧 UK — Angus Way raises £126K Pre-Seed [CPG]
Angus Way makes grass-fed British beef sticks as a minimally processed alternative to protein bars. The funding will support online customer acquisition, subscription growth, supply chain expansion, and broader retail distribution.
Lead: Neil Butler (formerly of Meridian Foods)
Follows: Not disclosed

🇺🇸 USA — UfarmX raises $250K Pre-Seed [Agtech]
Columbia, Maryland’s UfarmX builds credit scores for smallholder farmers in Africa who have no credit history, so lenders can finance them. It has scored 18,000+ farmers to date.
Lead: TEDCO Pre-Seed Builder Fund
Follows: N/A — single investor

🇮🇳 India — The Croffle Guys raises ₹14 crore (~$1.6M) [Foodservice]
Mumbai’s The Croffle Guys operates a quick-service restaurant chain specializing in croffles, a croissant-waffle hybrid. The funding will support expansion from eight outlets to over 40 additional locations across Mumbai, Delhi, and Pune.
Lead: V3 Ventures
Follows: N.A.N. Partners (Navin Agarwal family office)

🇬🇧 UK — Spare Snacks raises £300K [CPG]
Spare Snacks makes Scrapples, a brand of children's fruit snacks made from surplus fruit with just one or two ingredients. The funding will support its launch into Sainsbury's, marketing and sales expansion, and broader retail growth.
Lead: Golden Acre Foods
Follows: DTC and FMCG entrepreneurs

🇩🇰 Denmark — React Foods receives ~$0.6M grant [Alt-Protein]
Copenhagen’s React Foods uses a two-stage fermentation process to convert CO₂ and hydrogen into acetate, which is then used to grow protein-rich yeast biomass as a potential alternative to egg and dairy proteins.
Lead: BioInnovation Institute
Follows: N/A — grant

🇫🇮 Solar Foods’ Solein got a positive safety opinion from EFSA. It is the first food made by gas fermentation to get this clearance. Solar Foods filed in October 2021, and the opinion was adopted on 31 August 2026. The European Commission and member states still have to sign off.

🇰🇷 SeaWith will invest ₩20B (~$14.9M) in a cultivated Hanwoo beef plant. Under an MoU with Uiseong County, the startup will build at the county’s Food Tech Research Support Center, with three 2,000-liter bioreactors, a target of 400 tons/year and 46 new jobs.

🍱 Wonder filed confidentially for an IPO. Marc Lore’s food hall and delivery company, which owns Grubhub, Blue Apron, Tastemade and Spyce, raised $650M in July at about a $9B valuation and plans 100+ sites in Texas by the end of 2027.

🥬 LIVEKINDLY Collective closed its acquisition of Greenforce. The deal adds GREENFORCE's plant-based meat and egg alternatives to LIVEKINDLY's portfolio, expanding its presence in the European market.

🇦🇪 Abu Dhabi will let novel food companies run tasting trials before UAE approval. The framework allows companies developing novel foods, including cultivated meat, to conduct controlled tasting trials before receiving full authorization for commercial sale.

This week, Alex Shandrovsky spoke with Thai Sade, Co-founder & CEO of BloomX. I’m your host, Alex Shandrovsky.

🎤 Why Honey Bees Don’t Like Avocados with Thai Sade, Co-founder & CEO at BloomX.
🎯 Mission: Robotic pollination for high-value crops like avocados and blueberries, sold to growers as a per-hectare service.
💰 Raised: $13M Series A (~$20M in total)
🤝 Investors: Elah Fund (lead), Rothschild, Sadot Innovation, Tene Fund, OurCrowd, BioBee, several kibbutzim and the Israel Innovation Authority
🌏 Where: Rishpon, Israel, with growers in Peru, Mexico, South Africa and Israel, and the US next

Top lessons from the episode:
🌼 Bees don’t like avocado pollen: given a choice, honey bees go elsewhere, so avocado orchards are hard to pollinate well.
🚜 Sell the outcome, own the machine: growers pay per hectare and BloomX owns the equipment, so farmers don’t carry the hardware risk.
📆 Seasonality is a feature: the same machines move from Israel to South Africa and Peru as bloom seasons shift between hemispheres.
🥑 Start where growers can pay: Avocados and blueberries are first because the value per hectare is high enough without subsidies.
🤝 Investors are relationships: Thai knew the lead investor for four years before the round.

🎧 Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
🎥 Catch past conversations on YouTube as well.

We're attending Fi Europe in Frankfurt next week, and we're hosting an IC Dinner while we're there. Only 3 spots left.

🇩🇪 IC Dinner Frankfurt, during Fi Europe
📆 Wednesday 18 November 2026, 7–9 PM CET
📍 TapHouse Frankfurt, Mendelssohnstraße 51, Westend, a short walk from the Festhalle/Messe U-Bahn
🤝 Co-hosted with Tomas Turner (Co-founder & CEO, Cosaic), Gilai Nachmann (Arla) and me
🎫 $9 reserves your seat. You cover your own food and drinks. Founders and operators only, no investors, Chatham House rules.
Register for one of the last 3 seats

📍 Want to host an IC Dinner or Meet Up in your city? Apply to host.

In many food ingredient businesses, raw materials make up 60–80% of the cost of goods. Most founders spend years on the science and very little time on how agri-food markets actually move.

Jürgen Keil's example is a startup that buys 100 tons of cocoa at $5,000 a ton, while its customer waits and buys at $3,500. That one purchase leaves the startup with $150,000 in lost margin.

In Column #4 he lays out five things to do about it:

Read Jürgen's full column.

🍕 An Italian chef was fired for refusing to put pineapple on pizza. A chef in Australia lost his job after refusing to make Hawaiian pizzas.

🍔 Washingtonian reviewed the “sixth-worst McDonald’s in America.” The Stafford, Virginia, location has 2.4 stars online.

🍰 A baker made life-sized cakes of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Emma Jayne spent three months making the cakes using 60kg of sugar paste and 20kg of modelling chocolate, for the Cake International show in Birmingham.

With love,
Alex Shandrovsky and Kat Tarasova

Disclosures | Boring disclaimer