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Leading this week's dozen FoodTech raises was Plantible Foods, securing $35M to expand production of the “Holy Grail” of plant protein. The company extracts RuBisCO, a protein found in every green leaf, which scores as well as animal protein on digestibility and behaves like one too, emulsifying, gelling and binding at low inclusion rates.

A new duckweed strain has pushed yields up more than 40%, and the expansion takes capacity five-fold to over 1,000 tonnes a year. $10M of the round is equity, with a USDA-guaranteed loan covering the rest.

Also this week:

✍️ Jürgen Keil brings the operator's view to FTW in a new monthly column
🤖 Proxy Foods raises $6M for AI recipe design
🏚️ 80 Acres Farms is shutting down after failing to raise additional capital
🦫 Two capybaras walked into a Brazilian state legislature.

Today’s newsletter was sent to {{active_subscriber_count}} subscribers. Welcome to FoodTech Weekly.

FTW has a new columnist. Jürgen Keil spent 35 years at Cargill, where he built and ran agrifood businesses at commercial scale, and now works with FoodTech founders to get from a working pilot to that same point. His forthcoming monthly column, Jürgen on FoodTech Supply Chain, will cover the industrial realities of scaling food innovation successfully.

We sat down with Jürgen first to talk about why he left Cargill, what he's found on the startup side, and the key places he sees FoodTech companies make supply chain mistakes. Read the entire conversation here.

🇮🇳 India — Sid's Farm raises ₹81 Cr (~$8.4M) [CPG]
D2C dairy brand testing every batch across 45+ quality parameters, sourcing from 5,000+ farmers to serve 50,000+ families.
Lead: Omnivore
Follows: Narotam Sekhsaria Family Office, Dodla Dairy, Next Bharat Ventures, LIO

🇮🇳 India — Mitti Labs raises $9.5M [AI]
Satellite and AI measurement of methane and water savings from alternate-wetting-and-drying rice, sold as carbon credits shared with smallholders.
Lead: Aramco Ventures
Follows: Lightspeed India, Godrej Industries Group, Cisco Foundation, Francis Family Fund, Volta Circle

🇪🇸 Spain — InsectBiotech raises €7.2M (~$8.3M) [Alt Protein]
Black soldier fly larvae converting olive pomace and ag side streams into protein, oil and frass fertiliser; new Andalusia plant live Q3 2027.
Lead: N/A — no lead named
Follows: Arcano Partners, plus undisclosed US investors

🇺🇸 USA — Proxy Foods raises $6M [AI]
AI platform for food and beverage R&D teams to design and iterate recipes — a "Canva for the food scientist".
Lead: N/A — lead not confirmed
Follows: Ted Leonsis, CAVA co-founders, SWaN & Legend Venture Partners, RGH Capital

🇮🇳 India — Inaara NeoFoods raises ₹210M (~$2.4M) [Alt Protein]
Ingredient supplier for food and beverage manufacturers, turning grains and pulses into plant proteins, starches, fibres and lipids, with contract farming upstream for traceability.
Lead: Angel syndicate
Follows: N/A

🇮🇹 Italy — Aflabox raises €1.35M (~$1.6M) [Supply Chain]
Portable AI field testing for mycotoxins, grain quality and food safety; 20 devices already with the World Food Programme in Kenya.
Leads: Eatable Adventures, Accelera Ventures (co-leads, via FoodSeed)
Follows: N/A

🇦🇺 Australia — Octopusbot raises A$1M+ (~$700K) [AI]
AI forecasting of grain production, supply risk and price up to seven months ahead of official estimates.
Lead: N/A — no lead named
Follows: Folklore Ventures, No Brand

🇸🇪 Sweden — Sonicflora raises SEK 2.7M (~$255K) [Ag Biotech]
Ultrasonic sensors and AI that "listen" to plants to catch crop stress before it becomes visible.
Lead: Almi Invest
Follows: LiU Invest, plus three business angels

🇺🇸 USA — Upstream Biotechnology raises undisclosed Seed [Crop Protection]
The Duke spin-out is developing a way to modify natural disease-resistance characteristics in crops to activate only when disease strikes, avoiding the yield penalty of “always-on” defence.
Lead: LeVert Ventures
Follows: Corteva Catalyst, Silver Blue, VTC Ventures

🇺🇸 USA — Plantible Foods raises $35M [Alt Protein]
The company grows duckweed in Texas and extracts RuBisCO, a protein that emulsifies and binds like egg or dairy. $10M of the round is equity, with the rest a USDA-guaranteed loan for the operational buildout, funding a five-fold capacity increase.
Lead: RA Capital (equity)
Follows: Existing investors

🇨🇱 Chile — Ecoterra raises $1M strategic impact investment [Supply Chain]
Free-range eggs, dairy, proteins and coffee across Chile and Colombia, with blockchain traceability; $500K equity plus $500K redeemable.
Lead: Capibara Impact Trust
Follows: N/A

🇸🇪 Sweden — Unna raises SEK 6.3M (~$600K) growth financing [CPG]
Organic Swedish infant formula, follow-on formula, välling and porridge, back on shelves after a retail relaunch.
Lead: Undisclosed
Follows: N/A

This week, Alex Shandrovsky had conversations with:

🍗 Just Meat Protein Co-Founder & CEO Ellie Whelan and Chief Scientific Officer Dr. Aarti Tobin break down how they closed an A$1.8M seed round led by poultry giant Ingham's Enterprises to convert low-value meat cuts into high-value protein powder, sharing how they structured CSIRO's IP without equity dilution and stacked Australian matching grants to fund their scale-up. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🌱 B-COS Co-Founder & CEO Dr. Chiara Guidi breaks down how she commercialized 15 years of University of Ghent research to raise €1M in pre-seed funding for precision-fermented "plant vaccines," backed by Agri Investment Fund (AIF) and VP Capital, with support from Biotope by VIB, a VLAIO research grant, and EIT (European Institute of Innovation & Technology). Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🎥 You can catch both conversations on YouTube as well.

🏚️ 80 Acres Farms is ceasing operations, unable to raise the capital to keep going — the latest closure for the beleaguered indoor farming sector. Just last year, the company raised $115M and bought Plantae Biosciences, absorbed Kalera weeks later, then merged with Soli Organic.

🧫 France is committing a further €20M (~$22M) to Ferments du Futur, its France 2030 public–private fermentation programme, for a 2026–28 second phase led by INRAE.

🐮 Aleph Farms has cleared Singapore approval for its cultivated beef, opening the way to launch.

🥩 LiveKindly Collective is selling Dalco to Hilton Food Group, consolidating another plant-based meat maker into a larger protein group.

🌱 The Robertson Foundation is funding methane reduction, plant-based diets and food-waste work through a new round of grants.

🌭 Juicy Marbles is bringing butcher-style plant-based bangers to Ocado in its latest UK expansion.

🏷️ California is banning "sell-by" food labels, targeting the date-label confusion behind a large share of household food waste.

📚 A book turned up at an Australian library 150 years late.

🐟 A man ate 15 fish fingers in a minute for a world record.

🐙 Five years of lawsuits and one Netflix documentary later, the world’s first proposed octopus farm is dead.

🦫 Two giant capybaras had to be escorted out of a Brazilian state legislature.

We love you.
Steve, Ilkka, and Alex

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🎵 This issue was produced while listening to 7/4 (Shoreline) by Broken Social Scene.

By Steve Edgerton, Ilkka Taponen, and Alex Shandrovsky.
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Disclosures | Boring disclaimer