Hi there,

Steve here. One FoodTech startup recently ran out of runway proving out the business model for cultivated octopus. Another just got funded to grow food in deep space, by way of the Canadian Arctic. This sector certainly never lacks for ambition.

We’ve got plenty to cover this week, so let’s get right to it.

This week’s rundown:

🫘 Phytokana lands $17.8M in fava bean financing.
♻️ SCO2 scores $2.7M for its food byproduct recovery tech.
🚀 The Canadian Space Agency backs an Arctic grow box.
🌸 AI-generated flowers that don't exist are being sold as real seeds.

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🇺🇸  U.S.A — Smash Foods raises $18M [CPG]
Fresh funding to fuel a manufacturing expansion for Smash Bites, after the brand tripled its business, passed 10,000 retail doors and reached profitability on minimal marketing spend.
Lead: L Catterton
Follows: The Family Fund, Eclair Partners

🇮🇳  India — Arboreal raises ₹230 crore (~$24M) [Novel Ingredients]
Arboreal engineers specialty food and nutraceutical ingredients on one platform spanning process R&D, formulation science, and precision manufacturing. The sizable Series A will fund expansion of manufacturing capacity, deepen R&D, and accelerate commercialization of the startup’s functional ingredient line.
Leads: EAAA Alternatives / Edelweiss, Omnivore
Follows: Rainmatter by Zerodha

🇺🇸 U.S.A — Quercus Biosolutions raises $5M [Crop Protection]
Quercus uses AI to design proteins that hit the same targets as chemical herbicides but through a different mechanism, one that still works on weeds that have grown resistant to legacy chemistry. The oversubscribed round funds regulatory work and moving its first product toward launch.
Lead: Serra Ventures
Follows: AgriCap Fund, Ag Startup Engine, AgVentures Alliance, Flyover Capital, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Iowa Corn Opportunities Fund, Kentucky Corn Plus, Rootstock Capital, Starshot Capital

🇺🇸  U.S.A — SCO2 raises $2.7M [Food Waste]
SCO2’s Nextract runs supercritical CO₂ through five controlled pressure stages to separate molecules from biomass and food waste, helping efficiently recover and process underutilized food byproduct compounds into highly valuable side streams.
Lead: N/A (investors undisclosed)

🇮🇪  Ireland — Nernst Electric raises €1.7M (~$2M) [Aquaculture]
Nernst Electric generates oxygen of over 99% purity on site from ambient air using ceramic membranes, replacing trucked liquid oxygen for fish farms and heavy industry. The round funds a demonstration unit, following the first pilot-scale system now being deployed.
Lead: Hatch Blue’s Blue Revolution Fund
Follows: N/A

🇪🇸  Spain — ART Technologies raises €200K (~$235K) [AI]
The Valencia-based startup builds hyperspectral vision inspection systems that read internal and surface characteristics of food in real time on bulk production lines. The round accelerates industrial scale-up and commercial rollout, on top of €315K previously raised.
Lead: REDIT Ventures
Follows: REDIT Ventures’ Club de Inversión

🇨🇦  Canada — Phytokana raises C$25M (~$17.8M) [Alt Protein]
Phytokana processes fava beans into plant-based protein concentrates, starch flour and fava flour using heat- and chemical-free dry fractionation for meat and dairy alternatives, baked goods and snacks. The financing completes the equity for an Alberta facility sized to process 30,000 tonnes of fava beans a year, underpinned by C$450M+ of long-term offtake agreements.
Lead: Undisclosed strategic investor
Follows: Existing shareholders, directors and employees

This week, Alex Shandrovsky had conversations with:

🧬 Saku Biosciences Co-Founder & CEO Mark van Zee breaks down how he navigated a frozen market to close a $940K round led by Big Idea Ventures—from turning $50K–$100K friends-and-family checks into a fundraising chain reaction, to reverse-engineering a five-minute pitch designed to give the lead investor "goosebumps." Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

📜 Darko Mandich, Managing Director of the BEAM Circular Accelerator and Ag Practice Chair at gener8tor, draws on his journey from founder to investor to reveal what it really takes to fund and scale circular bioeconomy startups today, from replacing basic LOIs with binding off-take agreements to leveraging Central Valley ag-waste infrastructure. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🎥 You can catch both conversations on YouTube as well.

🚀  The Canadian Space Agency awarded The Growcer up to C$745,000 to build a deployable Controlled Environment Agriculture unit with Arctic Fresh Group of Companies, an Inuit enterprise in Nunavut. The same box is meant to grow fresh produce for remote northern communities and for future lunar missions.

🌎  Some refreshingly good news: South America is eradicating hunger faster than anywhere else in the world, down by one-third since 2020, according to a new FAO report. Just 3.5% of people in the region consume insufficient calories, the lowest level ever recorded.

🌊  The EU’s Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking committed €7M to Salina, a 22-member consortium building marine biorefineries that turn seaweed into food and sports nutrition, cosmetics and bio-based construction materials.

🌱  Californian AgTech startup NuCider unveiled a new chickpea variety with 50% more protein and 25% less fat than conventional varieties. The company has 10,000 acres planted for 2026 and is signing commercial partnerships with manufacturers.

🐙 Cell4Food has shut down after developing cell lines across multiple fish species and making progress on cultivated octopus, one of the hardest seafood species to crack.

🌸  Scammers are selling seeds for exotic AI-generated flowers that don’t exist.

🍋  Kids facing a $400 licensing fee for a lemonade stand fought the law. And the kids might win.

💉  GLP-1 treatment in Denmark reduced long-term sickness leave by 17.3%.

📦  How shipping container disasters became a scientific goldmine.

We love you.
Steve, Ilkka, and Alex

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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to Celebration Rock by Japandroids

By Steve Edgerton, Ilkka Taponen and Alex Shandrovsky.
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