🇺🇸 USA — Tiny Health raises $33M [Biotech]
Austin-based Tiny Health sells gut and vaginal microbiome tests aimed at turning microbiome data into clinical and consumer care pathways. The oversubscribed Series B brings total funding to $46M. About $5M is earmarked for a Microbiome Research Program.
Lead: B Capital
Follows: Black Opal Ventures, Denver Ventures, Pave Health Ventures, Alumni Ventures, Gaingels, Pari Passu Ventures, returning investors

🇺🇸 USA — Confido raises $55M [SaaS]
Confido (New York) unifies finance, accounting, sales, and operations across the CPG commercial cycle, including deductions, trade spend, forecasting, and planning. Currently more than 250 brands (including Daisy, Dude Wipes, Kettle & Fire, and Unilever divisions) plan $30B+ in retail sales on the platform. This round brings Confido’s total funding to $77M.
Lead: Insight Partners
Follows: Trenches Capital, Watchfire, Barrel Ventures; returning Footwork and Y Combinator

🇺🇸 USA — ArkeaBio raises $15M [Agtech]
Boston-based ArkeaBio is developing a vaccine to cut livestock methane emissions. The Series A2 funds the push toward a first commercial product in New Zealand. The company recently pared headcount by about a third to extend runway.
Lead: AgriZeroNZ
Follows: Breakthrough Energy

🇨🇭 Switzerland — FOOD FOUNDERS Studio raises €4M (~$4.5M) [Foodtech]
The Zurich venture studio builds B2B foodtech companies around manufacturer problems such as taste, texture, affordability, nutrition, and then recruits CEOs. Its first venture, SentiaNova, removes off-flavors from pulse proteins and is hiring and raising its own round. This oversubscribed FO/angel round funds the next two studio companies.
Lead: Not named — family offices and angels
Follows: Not named

🇨🇭 Switzerland — Cotierra raises $3M [Agtech]
Zurich-based Cotierra deploys mobile pyrolysis reactors with MRV software so coffee and cocoa farmers can turn crop residues into biochar on-farm. The result is a soil amendment with verified carbon removal. This round funds the jump from early pilots to repeatable commercial deployments.
Lead: PINC (Paulig) and Carbon Removal Partners (co-leads)
Follows: Zürcher Kantonalbank, Carbon Drawdown Initiative, better ventures, GOTA Ventures, Hungry4Impact, Triple Impact Ventures

🇸🇬 Singapore — Life Lab Resources raises $1M [Biotech]
Singapore’s Life Lab Resources runs a biorefinery that converts treated food waste into microbial protein for aquaculture and animal feed. The funding will help push its waste-to-feed platform further toward commercialization.
Lead: Not named in available coverage
Follows: Not named in available coverage

🇳🇱 Netherlands — Those Vegan Cowboys consortium wins €1.29M [Biotech]
A Brabant consortium led by Those Vegan Cowboys (with Interfood, HAS green academy, and XXL Nutrition) won an OPZuid public subsidy to take precision-fermented casein into sports-nutrition products. The project will run through March 2028 with a total budget of ~€2.58M, covering scale-up, prototypes, and consumer and technical work.
Awarded by: OPZuid (EU regional programme)

🌱 Just in time for International Day of Awareness for Food Waste and Food Loss, Food Impact Partners profiled 12 Founders and CEOs who are Fixing the Food System’s Biggest Invisible Problem.

📋 Bright Green Partners launched AgriFood Tech DD Assist, a free due diligence framework for investors and founders. Answer four prompts about your case and stage, then download a customized guide. Check it out here: https://duediligence-assist.com

🇫🇷 A new €20M+ precision fermentation scale-up hub backed by Danone, Michelin and others has opened in France. BIOP’s 5,000 m² facility offers fermentation capacity up to 15,000 L, downstream processing and analytics to help biotech startups bridge the gap between lab-scale development and commercial production.

🛒 Tesco committed £20M as an anchor LP in Henry Dimbleby’s Bramble Fund I (targeting £100M) to back healthier, more sustainable UK food ventures. Its first investment is in KluraLabs’ antimicrobial packaging materials.

🍔 McDonald’s is revamping its menu for the GLP-1 era, with more protein-forward options and flexible portion sizes as consumers increasingly prioritize protein and eat smaller meals. The changes are part of an $8.5B, decade-long overhaul that will also bring new restaurant formats and AI-powered operations.

🍠 The Philippines bans fresh ube exports. Production rose 17% in the first half of 2026, but the government says demand is growing faster than supply. The government specifically wants to protect scarce planting material. Frozen and processed ube aren’t covered by the ban.

💰 Wefunder is looking for US agtech and food startups. Selected companies receive $100K from Wefunder’s accredited investor network, pitch to a room of VCs and angels, and can go on to raise up to $5M from Wefunder’s broader investor community.

Prachi Jha is an experienced food scientist and product developer based in Sweden. She has worked in a variety of roles within the food system in USA and Sweden, ranging from researching high-protein mycelium as a novel food in California to developing and scaling up fermented, plant-based cheeses in Stockholm.

In Is Plant-Based Meat Actually Dying? It Depends On Where You Are., Prachi argues that plant-based meat’s US slump is obscuring a much more complicated global story. While the Western playbook of premium, climate-driven products is struggling, countries including Israel, China, and India are tying alternative proteins to food security, affordability, and national strategy. Read the full piece.

"If you chase money, you will not find money. If you chase excellence, you might find money."
— Mark Kahn, Managing Partner, Omnivore

🎤 Alex Shandrovsky with Omnivore Managing Partner Mark Kahn, Oyster Bay’s Divya Murthy, and Cosaic’s Tomas Turner — recorded live at The Drop in Malmö — on what still works when raising in a down market: who writes checks, how founders should pitch risk, and where climate/agfood capital is actually moving. Episode: The Drop: Raising Money During A Down Market.

🎧 Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

🐀 Boston researchers are listening in on rat vocalizations with ultrasonic mics and thermal cameras — mapping where rodents chatter at night to test which deterrents actually work. Urban pest control meets bioacoustics.

☕ Starbucks said it will close about 250 underperforming North American stores by fiscal year-end — a reminder that even the densest coffee map gets pruned when traffic and labor math stop working.

🥃 Chartreuse stays scarce on purpose. Carthusian monks intentionally capped production in 2021 to protect monastic life, while scarcity and a secret recipe keep the green liqueur trending in cocktail bars. Supply constraint as brand strategy, 400 years in the making.

With love,
Alex Shandrovsky and Kat Tarasova

Disclosures | Boring disclaimer