Hi there,

Daniel here — FoodHack just published an article called “Europe's 29 FoodTech Founders to Watch, According to VCs”. I was interviewed for this piece, and mentioned Joshua Sauer of Zya, Sara Marquart of Planet A Foods, and Shiv Sivakumar of Omni Pet. Check out the article for the full list of founders and startups shared by the 9 other VCs (all of whom will join HackSummit in Lausanne next week).

This week's rundown:

💷 Clean Food Group scores about $7M to scale its yeast oil manufacturing
👃 Scentian Bio lands $7M for ‘digital nose’ used for food quality control
🚜 Fieldwork Robotics harvests £3M for autonomous ag harvesting robots

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Can we solve a $3 billion global waste crisis by achieving the scientifically “impossible”? Meat processors currently struggle with short 15-day shelf lives that force inefficient supply chains and massive spoilage. Tewari De-Ox Systems believes they have unlocked the solution. By engineering a patented environment of absolute zero oxygen, they’ve created a process that halts degradation without chemical preservatives—extending the shelf life of retail-ready meat to an incredible 120+ days.

We’ve spoken to Dr. Gaurav ‘Doc’ Tewari, the veteran food process engineer and winner of the 2026 Tufts New Venture Competition, to discuss how he is disrupting the global protein market using thermodynamics and reaction kinetics.

🇬🇧 Clean Food Group, £4.5M + £700K grant (~$7M total), yeast oil manufacturer scaling to become the world's largest. Investors: Clean Growth Fund and New Agrarian (co-leads), Seed Innovations and Döhler Group (existing), plus Innovate UK (grant).

🇳🇿 Scentian Bio, $7M pre-Series A, AI-powered biosensor "digital nose" for food quality control using synthesised insect odorant receptors. Investors: Icehouse Ventures (lead), Cultivate Ventures, NZGCP, and others.

🇬🇧 Fieldwork Robotics, £3M ($4M), autonomous agricultural harvesting robots. Investors: Elbow Beach Capital (lead).

This week, Alex Shandrovsky had conversations with:

🇺🇸 Alec Lorenzo, CEO and co-founder of Weekend, Inc. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

🇪🇸 Johan Morales, investor at Zubi Capital. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

🇮🇱 Ziv Kohav, Head of the Open Innovation Program (ICL Open) at ICL Group. Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

🤖 AI tractor company Monarch has gone bust, while Hawaii farms switch to robotic dogs to guard valuable corn crops.

✅ French cultivated meat company Parima (umbrella for Gourmey and Vital Meat), has obtained regulatory clearance to sell its cultivated duck in Singapore, Green Queen reports.

🐝 Important question: How many beehives can a city handle?

‼️ New labels for non-ultra processed foods are coming soon, Marion Nestle notes.

🪖 The war in Iran is exposing the huge risks in our food system: Where does your food come from? The supermarket or a local farm, you might think, or maybe you even grow your own. But really the answer is fossil fuels – and thanks to the ongoing Iran war, you are going to start noticing that.

💸 After several years of decline, VC investment in agtech is enjoying a modest comeback driven by renewed appetite for dual-use tech and advances in robotics. On LinkedIn, Arlene Dickinson laid out some eye-watering investment numbers elsewhere: AI companies collected $242B just in Q1 ‘26, while the entire global foodtech sector got $3.6B billion that same quarter. Lastly, DigitalFoodLab published its annual map of AgriFoodTech Unicorns.

🥩 Portion size matters. New evidence shows restaurants can reduce meat servings and increase vegetable intake to support healthier, more sustainable food choices without affecting customer satisfaction.

👨🏻‍💻 Essential (🇰🇪) is hiring a Head of Fermentation / Fermentation Scientist (Fungal / Mycoprotein).

🇪🇺 The EU Food Transition Fellowship places you inside the organizations driving Europe's food transition in Brussels. Seven months, a full salary, and a cohort of ambitious professionals who decided their skills belonged somewhere that mattered. You start contributing from day one. Apply by April 27, 2026.

🚀 Kickstarting for Good is an 18-week incubator supporting nonprofit entrepreneurs working to transform the food system towards a plant-forward future. We’re looking for individuals with strong early-stage ideas or young organizations with high potential to scale. The programme includes mentorship, networking, and up to $350,000 in seed funding distributed among participants, with two in-person sessions in Berlin (travel and accommodation covered). Applications are open globally until the end of May.

🙋🏻 “Commercial and operations leader passionate about scaling the next generation of FoodTech companies. I turn strategy into execution at speed, driving growth, building high-performing teams, and creating customer-centric businesses that last. Open to impactful opportunities where I can help shape, scale, and win. Based in Stockholm, Sweden. Reach out to me here.”

🍺 Sequestering greenhouse gases in your beer!

🔫 Turning guns into garden tools. In Asheville, North Carolina, RAWtools South brings together blacksmiths, gun owners, and faith communities to transform surrendered guns into art.

🐮 Milk-based beauty products herald new trend: Massimiliano Galdiero, the founder of Bufarma skincare, which produces face creams, serums, and body washes from buffalo milk at the centuries-old family farm near Naples, said that buffalo beauty started as a “family secret”.

💃 The hottest new club is your grocery store: Cash registers give way to turntables, otherwise the store’s format remains untouched. The vibe is lively and buzzy, complete with a street food-inspired menu in the grocery’s grab-and-go sections. People dance and dance while shopping.

🍱 AI is ruining online recipes: ‘It’s an extinction event’.

We love you.
Daniel, Ilkka, and Alex

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🎵 This issue was produced while Ilkka listened to Your Sweet 666 by Him, and Daniel listened to CATFISH by CBW, Tadeo, Mata, and Wyguś.

By Daniel Skavén Ruben, Ilkka Taponen, and Alex Shandrovsky.
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