Hi there,

Steve here. We have some exciting FTW news before getting into this week's edition. Kat Tarasova is joining us as Managing Editor, and she's bringing a team of Contributing Writers on board to expand our global coverage of FoodTech events and ecosystem news.

Kat is a Visiting Researcher at Princeton University, the founder and CEO of nutrition startup Mycsology Foods, and holds a PhD in Microbiology from MIT. Some of you met her hosting an IC Dinner at IFT FIRST last month, and you can expect to hear more from her in this newsletter and beyond as FTW enters an exciting new era.

This week’s rundown:
🌾 Ambrook raises $30M to do the books for family farms
🍄 Millow raises €2M to grow mycelium on Swedish oats
🥩 Meet the strange OG meatfluencers, who wanted to ranch manatees

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🇺🇸 USA — Ambrook raises $30M [Agtech]
AI-native bookkeeping and financial management for owner-operator businesses, starting with family farms. Now 8,000+ customers across all 50 states, up from ~2,500 a year ago, and $59M raised to date.
Lead: Lachy Groom
Follows: Thomson Reuters Ventures, Thrive Capital, Field Ventures, Cameron Ventures, plus angels Guillermo Rauch, Akshay Kothari and Tomer London

🇦🇺 Australia — BioScout raises A$6.75M (~$4.8M) [Ag Biotech]
Continuously samples air for fungal spores and flags disease pressure before symptoms are visible, so growers spray on signal rather than on schedule.
Leads: Demea Sustainable Investment, Astanor (co-leads)
Follows: GrainInnovate, GrainCorp Ventures, Hort Innovation Venture Fund, Artesian, Division Q

🇸🇪 Sweden — Millow raises €2M (~$2.3M) [Alt Protein]
Solid-state dry fermentation, growing mycelium directly on Swedish oats and psyllium. The raise funds a production build-out in a former LEGO hall in Stenkullen, near Gothenburg, and a commercial team for Nordic foodservice.
Lead: Magnus Emilson (founder, Visit Group; co-founder, ESS Group)
Follows: Jan Enhager (co-founder, Vitamin Well Group), plus undisclosed investors

🇦🇺 Australia — Agscent raises A$5M (~$3.5M) [Ag Biotech]
Sensing tech originally built by NASA to monitor astronaut health, now pointed at cattle. It reads chemical signatures in an animal's breath to confirm pregnancy weeks earlier than current methods, and to measure how much methane the animal is producing.
Lead: N/A — no lead named
Follows: Scale Investors, Tundra Capital, plus angels Nick Burton Taylor, Viv Oldfield and Chris Hoppe

🇩🇪 Germany — AquaNab raises undisclosed round [Aquaculture]
Alpaca-derived nanoantibodies delivered through fish feed to prevent and treat sea lice in farmed salmon — the industry's single most expensive health problem.
Lead: Nordic Foodtech VC (sole named investor)
Follows: N/A

🇦🇺 Australia — All G raises undisclosed convertible note [Fermentation]
Precision fermentation of recombinant bovine and human milk proteins, including lactoferrin, for nutrition and infant formula. Xeraya came in via convertible note.
Lead: N/A — no lead named
Follows: Xeraya Capital, Savencia, Döhler Ventures, Agronomics, ID Capital, Ellerston Capital

🇮🇱 Israel — Steakholder Foods raises $3.5M private placement [Alt Protein]
3D-printed plant-based whole cuts under the Perfecta line, funding a US distribution push. Rises to roughly $10.5M if the attached warrants are exercised.
Lead: N/A — investors not named
Follows: N/A

This week, Alex Shandrovsky had conversations with:

🧬 XiA'H Co-Founder & CEO Dan Cabral breaks down how a Monterrey biotech got "found" by Big Idea Ventures on LinkedIn — the check that kick-started its pre-seed — after starting with friends-and-family money and stitching together the START Fellowship at the University of St. Gallen and Mass Challenge. Also: the pivot from a B2C functional gum to a B2B ingredient platform, and how they turned LOIs into paid pilots. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🧠 NOUS Founder & CEO Lorenzo Pessini breaks down how he closed a €2.315M seed round led by dsm-firmenich Ventures, co-led by Eatable Adventures and CDP Venture Capital, sharing why he reframed his flagship ingredient from a "caffeine alternative" into a botanical brain-wellbeing ingredient, what the jointly-run clinical study that closed the round actually cost (€70K–€180K+), and why he chose B2B over building a consumer brand. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🎥 You can catch both conversations on YouTube as well.

🌸 BioHarvest signed a $20–30M deal to grow a rare perfume compound in bioreactors. A plant cell platform built for food, aimed at fragrance for its higher margins and lower regulatory hurdles.

🚀 Eatable Adventures launched NOVO Agrifoodtech, a 12-week equity-free accelerator in Bilbao. But it's fishing outside the sector, recruiting aerospace, defense, healthcare and manufacturing startups to point their tech at food.

📚 Vincent Kuiper of GOTA Ventures distilled 28 CPG brand teardowns into 25 lessons.

💊 P&G is acquiring Thorne for $3.8B — roughly six times the $680M L Catterton paid to take the supplement giant private in 2023, on revenue that passed $500M in 2025.

💉 GLP-1 users are now found in 22% of US households, double the late-2023 rate, and those households spend about 4% less on groceries after a year on the drug.

🍬 Orkla Snacks is buying European Candy Group for €207M (~$239M) to scale production and footprint for Bubs, its viral vegan gummy brand.

🏚️ Germany's Cultimate Foods has wound down, months after filing for bankruptcy — the cultivated-fat startup could not raise enough to stay afloat.

Four FTW rooms between now and mid-September. The full calendar is here.

🍻 IC Dinner Berlin — Monday 24 August, 6:00 PM CEST, at 3 Schwestern in Kreuzberg. Founders and operators only, no investors, Chatham House rules, one table. €9 covers entry and your first beer. Huge thanks to our co-hosts Arianna Spaggiari (Food Hack Ambassador, Berlin) and Oliver Fuss (CEO, FoodFunder) — they built this room with us. Register here.

🇮🇳 Food Innovation, An Investment Opportunity for India — Wednesday 26 August, 3:15–5:00 PM IST, at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Mumbai; a side event at Fi India 2026. Ayana Bio, The Better Meat Co and Prefer show what they have built and why they are choosing India to fuel global expansion — plant cell culture, fungal fermentation and bean-free coffee, $75M+ raised between them. Ashita Patodia, Senior Associate at Omnivore, joins to give the read from the other side of the table. 20 seats, invite only, no pitching. Request a seat.

🇸🇪 IC Dinner Malmö, at The Drop — Tuesday 15 September, 7:30 PM CEST. If you're coming to The Drop, come the night before: same format, founders and operators only, off the record. €9 covers entry and your first beer. Copenhagen is forty minutes up the bridge the evening prior — you can do both. Register here.

📍 Want one of these in your city? We are actively looking for hosts. You bring the vision and the content — we bring the playbook, the logistics, and the recruitment. Become a host.

🕊️ This new texting app delivers messages by simulated carrier pigeon. LA to New York takes 22 hours, and sometimes the bird dies. Just like the good old days.

👕 Food brands have discovered apparel.

🐹 A Dutch hamster named Mollie has monthly running stats that put most humans to shame. She's even on Strava.

🥩 If you think today's “meatfluencers” are a strange bunch, wait till you meet their predecessors.

We love you.
Steve, Ilkka, and Alex

- - -

🎵 This issue was produced while listening to The Suburbs by Arcade Fire.

By Steve Edgerton, Ilkka Taponen, and Alex Shandrovsky.
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