#318
Guillaume Béland (Zone Agtech) and Alex on the Investment Climate podcast
👋 Hi there, Alex here.
Our mission at FTW is simple: help our community scale, raise and sell their agrifood businesses.
After interviewing Guillaume Béland of Zone Agtech on the podcast, I realized this is a rare opportunity for our members: access to capital, government incentives and business development support, all in one place. They're building the Silicon Valley of agrifood in the region, and we want our members to be part of it.
FTW is now a scouting partner for Zone Agtech. We'll be reaching out directly to a select group of our community members, if you listened to the podcast and considering expanding to Canada, reply to this email and say Hi.
$500m Zone Agtech campus rendering
👋 Hi there, Kat here.
You may have noticed that Steve Edgerton’s name has been missing from recent newsletters. Steve recently started his new chapter at Rally Assets, a leading Canadian impact VC.
We are very proud of him and want to thank him for all the hard work, sharp editorial eye, and, of course, the Random Stuff he brought to your inbox every week. We wish him all the best in what comes next!
And stay tuned, we have more announcements coming, along with a food tech country guide to South Korea and additional content from our growing lineup of contributing writers.
This week’s rundown:
💰 $89M raised across 11 rounds this week, led by Edonia’s €15M spirulina factory and East Africa Foods’ $26M Series B
📦 Supply chain insights from ex-Cargill executive Jürgen Keil, plus DSM-Firmenich and Vivici joining a Dutch push for continuous precision fermentation
🍺 A rice-cooker manufacturer is brewing beer from its test rice
FUNDING
Spirulina mince, East African food distribution, and orchard robots
Spirulina gets its own factory. Illustration: FoodTech Weekly
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Series B:
🇹🇿 Tanzania — East Africa Foods raises $26M [Supply Chain]
East Africa Foods buys fresh produce from more than 28,000 smallholder farmers and sells it to 10,000+ urban retailers. The Series B is part of a ~$40M financing package that includes debt from the Schmidt Family Foundation and will fund expansion into Kenya. The company aims to reach 100,000 farmers (45% of them women!) and cut post-harvest waste by a third.
Lead: PIDG, via InfraCo
Follows: FMO, Oikocredit, Goodwell, Africa Eats, FINCA, returning ARAF
🇮🇳 India — Balwaan Krishi raises ₹100 crore (~$11M) [Agtech]
Jaipur-based Balwaan Krishi (Modish Tractoraurkisan) makes farm machinery sized for Indian smallholders working less than two hectares. The funding will expand manufacturing capacity, build out its dealer and service network in southern India, and support new equipment lines.
Lead: First Bridge India
Follows: Not named in available coverage
Series A:
🇫🇷 France — Edonia raises €15M [Alt-Protein]
Edonia turns spirulina into Edo, a mince-like protein grain with 27 g of protein per 100 g, using a patented process developed with AgroParisTech. The company says it already holds €30M in pre-orders across about 20 contracts. The funding will support a dedicated production facility in France and B2B foodservice expansion in Europe, Japan and the US. The package also includes non-dilutive Bpifrance (France 2030) funding and bank financing.
Lead: SWEN Capital Partners
Follows: Asterion Ventures, EIT Food
🇮🇱 Israel — BloomX raises $13M [Agtech]
Haifa-based BloomX develops robotic pollination technology for crops including avocados and blueberries. This round will support commercialization of its YAHAV2400 platform and expansion into new crops and markets.
Lead: Elah Fund
Follows: Rothschild, OurCrowd, Sadot, kibbutzim Magal, Horashim and Eyal, existing investors
🇧🇪 Belgium — Zymofix closes an undisclosed Series A [Fermentation]
Zymofix uses its Zyft solid-state fermentation platform to co-manufacture microbes for agricultural inputs. It has 15+ multinational customers and has tested more than 170 strains. The funding supports a €6M plant in Deinze expected to produce 300 tons annually starting in Q4 2027, enough for about 1M hectares. A €25M second phase is planned for 2028 to reach 2,000 tons.
Lead: First Imagine!
Follows: VP Capital, HTGF, The Nest Family Office
Seed:
🇩🇪 Germany — hexafarms raises €4.8M [Agtech]
Berlin-based hexafarms rents greenhouse sensors and scouting robots to growers on a subscription basis and turns the crop data into growing decisions. More than 50 growers across 13 countries use the platform, which covers €300M+ in produce across 50 cultivars this year.
Lead: Ananda Impact Ventures and Green Generation Fund (co-leads)
Follows: Grey Silo Ventures, better ventures; returning Speedinvest, Mudcake, Techstars
🇺🇸 USA — Meadow AI raises $7M [SaaS]
Seattle’s Meadow AI runs a “digital secret shopper” platform that checks how restaurants and physical retailers perform on the ground. The seed round includes the conversion of $6M in SAFEs, bringing total funding to $13M. Meadow reports more than $3M in contracted ARR.
Lead: Ulu Ventures
Follows: York IE, Flying Fish, TenOneTen Ventures, Leadout Capital, Wedbush Ventures
Pre-seed:
🇩🇪 Germany — Finches raises €2M [Supply Chain]
Bavarian startup Finches helps food producers identify supply risks early by combining procurement data with weather, satellite and field data. It launched Finches Intelligence in September. Early customers include an organic baby food maker and a North American Fortune 500 food company.
Lead: HTGF, with Vanagon Ventures (co-lead)
Follows: Bayern Kapital, UnternehmerTUM Funding for Innovators, strategic angels
🇮🇳 India — Myca raises $1.3M [SaaS]
Myca turns field teams’ WhatsApp messages, calls and photos into structured data, so agribusinesses can run field operations from one place. It launched in India and Indonesia in April and is now active in eight countries, with customers including Bayer, OFI, ETG-Parrogate, BigHaat and Dayatani.
Lead: Kriscore Capital
Follows: Eximius Ventures, Indigram Labs Foundation, agri angels
Early stage:
🇺🇸 USA — DARO raises $2.5M [Agtech]
Nebraska-based DARO runs whole-herd disease surveillance for hog producers, focused on PRRSV, a virus that costs the US swine industry about $1.2B a year. The round follows a $1.1M seed in early 2025 and expands testing capacity. DARO was incubated at The Combine.
Lead: Grit Road Partners, with Invest Nebraska and Nelnet (co-leads)
Follows: Not named in available coverage
🇪🇸 Spain — Plesh raises €3.75M [FoodTech]
Barcelona’s Plesh makes chocolate snacks with no added sugar, using plant fibers in place of sugar. Streamer Ibai Llanos and former footballer Gerard Piqué personally led the company’s second funding round and are joining as co-founders.
Lead: Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqué
Follows: Not named in available coverage
GUEST AUTHOR
The Missing Skill: Bringing Supply Chain Expertise Too Late
Jürgen Keil, FTW Column #3
About Jürgen: Jürgen has spent 35 years in agrifood value chains, much of it as a senior executive at Cargill, where he was Global Director Strategic Supply Chain and built supply chains across cocoa, edible oils, and beverage ingredients. Today he advises FoodTech startups, VCs and foundations, including Planet A Foods.
Jürgen found that deep supply chain experience is rare among FoodTech founders, CEOs, VCs and boards, and only 3% of 16,000 FoodTech publications even cover it. Jürgen argues that this missing expertise may be a key reason the industry struggles to scale. His third column explains what bringing it in too late costs startups, and how to fix it.
NOTEWORTHY
Continuous fermentation, a labeling fight in Brussels, and a $180M seed sovereignty push
Fermentation, without the batch. Illustration: FoodTech Weekly
🇳🇱 The Netherlands launches EcoFerm consortium to cut precision fermentation costs. The two-year, publicly funded initiative brings together Nizo Food Research, Dab.bio, Vivici, DSM-Firmenich, and Van Hall Larenstein University to advance continuous fermentation, using animal-free whey protein as a test case.
🇪🇺 Beyond Meat, Quorn, and other food industry players urge the EU to reject a proposed expansion of plant-based labeling restrictions. The proposal would ban meat-related terms like “burger” and “sausage” from plant-based product labels. Industry groups argue the restrictions would confuse consumers, increase costs, and undermine Europe's alternative protein sector.
🇺🇸 The USDA commits $180M to seed research to strengthen domestic seed production, improve crop genetics, and reduce reliance on foreign seed suppliers. The investment aims to bolster US agricultural security and competitiveness by expanding seed research and breeding capabilities.
🇳🇱 Wageningen University & Research opened Cibia, a facility using data-driven modeling to accelerate the scale-up of new food technologies. It is backed by the Dutch government’s Facilities for Applied Research scheme.
🇨🇭 Swiss startup Food Brewer brings cocoa-free chocolate to market. Yodel Bites, made from yellow-pea side streams and carob, are now sold on every SBB train with a dining car.
IC DINNERS / IC LIVE
A sold-out fireside, then Singapore
🇳🇱 Fireside chat with Thijs Bosch, CEO of The Protein Brewery: Monday 19 October, 5:00–6:00 PM CEST, online. Co-hosted with Tomas Turner (Cosaic) and Ricky Cassini (Michroma).
🇸🇬 IC Dinner Singapore: Monday 26 October, 7:00 PM SGT, a 10-minute walk from Asia-Pacific Agri-Food at Suntec. Founders and operators only, 12 seats. Co-hosted with Ding Jie “DJ” Tan, Co-Founder & CTO of Prefer. $9 holds your spot and covers a 🍺
📍 Want to host an IC Dinner or Meet Up in your city? Apply to host.
See the full calendar on the events page.
RANDOM STUFF
Lots of beer, and a very small soldier
🍺 Rice-cooker maker Zojirushi is brewing beer from its test rice. Elephant Dance, a craft beer made from rice left over from developing its cookers, aims to keep about 30 tons of rice out of the waste bin annually.
🫒 Athletic Brewing and Graza made an olive oil beer. Cold Off The Press is a limited-edition non-alcoholic pils brewed with extra virgin olive oil. Salad dressing in a can, or the next cult release.
🐕 Mexico’s National Guard has a new recruit: Comando, a chihuahua. The 13-month-old mascot is training in search and rescue. Small, but committed.
💘 Singapore is matchmaking its civil servants with an algorithm. The FirstDate pilot pairs government workers aged 21–35 using the Gale-Shapley stable-matching algorithm, the same math used to place medical residents.
🍓 Japan’s Aquponi grows strawberries and trout in one loop. Fish waste provides nutrients for the berries, while the plants clean the water, eliminating the need for added fertilizer.
With love,
Alex Shandrovsky and Kat Tarasova