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Funding

The Week in Food Tech Funding: Who-Hoo Cajoo!, Gatik Hauls In $85M

Fast Grocery Startups Continue Stocking Up on Big Cash

Cajoo, a 15 minutes or less fast grocery delivery specialist from France, has raised $40 million in fresh funding. The lead investor on the deal for the startup with the sneezy-sounding name is grocery giant Carrefour. As part of the deal, Carrefour will allow Cajoo to leverage its purchasing organization.

Cajoo is part of a growing cohort of fast grocery (and creatively-named) startups like Weezy, Gorillas, Flink, GoPuff, and JOKR that are building networks of dark stores to deliver a variety of products in (largely) metro areas in the US, Europe, and Asia. The delivery times vary slightly (some promise 10, others 15), as do the products (some are just essentials while others focus on fresh food), but all are looking to expand fast by raising big cash.

Carrefour’s interest in Cajoo makes me wonder if big grocery giants will begin to partner with or acquire fast-grocery startups to compete with Amazon. In recent years, Amazon, which doesn’t offer 15-minute delivery (at least yet), has been putting pressure on grocery providers to up their games with their one-hour or less delivery. While Amazon is much stronger in the US when it comes to grocery (though its presence in Europe is growing), established grocery companies like Carrefour probably see a future where fast-grocery is a utility and are preparing accordingly.

What will be interesting to watch is how established grocery players mesh operations with fast-grocery providers over time. Big players like Kroger and Walmart have widely distributed networks of warehouses and retail stores, but in the fast-grocery business, where neighborhood proximity is key, startups build out their dark store networks zip code by zip code.

For those old enough to remember Kozmo.com, it’s easy to see the similarities with this new generation beyond just the funny name. But unlike Kozmo, this new wave of fast-grocery startups comes at a time when advances in logistics technology, mobility and automation make distributed fast-grocery possible and when consumers en mass are shopping online for daily necessities.

Some are already suggesting online grocery is reaching a saturation point and consolidation is around the corner. While I think this is probably right, I also expect fast-grocery startups to keep bagging big funding rounds for at least the next 6-12 months until the buying frenzy starts.

Fast Grocery isn’t the only funding story this week. Here’s what else happened in food tech funding:

Alt Protein

Plantible Foods, $21.5 million: Plantible Foods, a startup which grows plantweed (aka Lemna), has raised $21.5 million to help fund growth. The San Diego based startup has developed a process to produces a protein that has many of the functional properties of egg white as well a neutral taste and color. The protein is based on RuBiSco enables egg white applications like emusifying and binding for products like creamers and cream cheeses.

Stockeld Dreamery, €16.5 million – Stockeld Dreamery, a maker of plant-based cheese alternatives, raised €16.5 million. The company’s flagship product is a feta alternative made from a base of fermented peas and fava beans. The company is planning to use the new capital to grow its team from 22 people to about 50. In 2022, Stockeld will move into a pilot production plant and headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.

Ag Tech

Fieldin Raises $30 Million: Fieldin, an ag tech startup that makes tools that digitizes the management of farms, has raised $30 million series B. The company has developed what it calls an agricultural operating system (AgOS) that uses AI and IoT tech to help farmers manage “the entire growing cycle from planning to execution, including equipment, workers, materials, and more.” Sensors are installed on farm equipment like tractors and sprayrs and, according to Fieldin, turns it into ‘smart’ machines.

Protealis, €5.7 Million: Protealis, a company that provides sustainable seeds for protein crops, raised a €5.7 Million in an extension of a Series A round it started earlier this year with a €6 Million investment. The company develops new variants of seeds of protein crops like soy that breed faster and are more resilient.

CPG

Poppi, $13.5 Million: Prebiotic soda company Poppi raises a $13.5 million Series A2 led by CAVU Ventures with some help from celebrities Russell Westbrook and the band the Chainsmokers, and a few others. The company’s ties to CAVU go back to when founders (husband-wife team Stephen and Allison Ellsworth) appeared on Shark Tank in 2018 and got an investment firm’s co-founder Rohan Oza for its prebiotic filled soda.

Allklear, $1.3 Million: Hong Kong-based functional beverage startup Allklear has raised a $1.3 million (HK$10 million) pre-A funding round. The company’s flagship beverage is called Detox Future Salad that is packed with 12 ingredients and 25 essential nutrients that the founder claims is equivalent to five bowls of salad.

nu company, €14 million: nu company, which likes lower-case letters and better-for-you chocolate, has raised a €14 million Series A funding round. The company has a chocolate bar brand in nucao and also has an organic protein brand numove. The company’s products are in 10 thousand stores today and the company has seen triple digital growth over the past four years.

Food Robots & Automation

Gatik, $85 Million: Robotic delivery startup Gatik has raised $85 million Series B, bringing its total funding to $114 million. The company specializes in middle mile delivery, which is shuttling goods between businesses such as between a distributor’s warehouse to a retail store. The company will use the funds to expand operations in Texas, its fourth delivery area, for its all-electric box truck.

Grocery Tech

Zippin, $30 Million: Cashierless checkout startup Zippin raised $30 million to continue to expand its operations across four continents. Zippin joins others like Grabango, Sensei, and Tripo in raising funds this year as the grocery industry accelerates its push into the automated checkout space. The automated checkout cohort is just one segment in a growing array of new companies hoping to help the grocery industry modernize its tech stack. Over the past half-decade, the industry has been racing to modernize their often antiquated technology both in-store and online as they see Amazon trying to pull customers away and companies like Instacart looking to front-end and disintermediate them.

That’s it for this week. If you have funding news you want in ou weekly food tech news wrapup, let us know. And make sure you subscribe if you want to get the The Week in Food Tech Funding in your inbox.

Stockeld Dreamery Raises €16.5 Million for Legume-Based Alternative Cheeses

This week, Swedish plant-based cheese company Stockeld Dreamery announced that it has raised €16.5 million (~$20 million USD) in a Series A round, according to a release sent to The Spoon. Led by Astanor Ventures and Northzone, the funding round also saw participation from new investors, including Trellis Road, Eurazeo, Norrsken VC, Edastra, Gullspång Re:food, and several angel investors. This brings the company’s total funding to around $24 million USD.

Stockeld Dreamery, formerly known as Noquo Foods, launched its first product in May 2021, called Stockeld Chunk. The plant-based cheese is an alternative to feta and is made from a base of fermented peas and fava beans. Similar to feta’s nutritional composition, it contains 20 percent fat, 1.5 percent carbs, and 13 percent protein.

The company is currently hiring and is planning to use the new capital to grow its team from 22 people to about 50. In 2022, Stockeld will move into a pilot production plant and headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden.

Alternative milk and dairy are the largest categories in the plant-based space, with the alternative cheese category alone growing a total of 42.5 percent in 2020. Stockeld Dreamery is not the only plant-based cheese company to raise a hefty funding round this year; Miyoko’s Creamery raised a $52 million Series C round in August, and Nobel Foods closed a $75 million funding round in July.

For now, Stockeld Dreamery’s first alternative cheese product is only available in select retailers in Stockholm, Sweden. However, the press release mentioned that after moving into its new facility, the company will release new products and expand its distribution outside of the country.

Food Waste Start-up Agricycle Global Raises $2.4M Seed Round

Agricycle Global, a food and agriculture waste start-up based in Wisconsin, announced this week that it has raised a two-part seed round totaling $2.4 million. The round was led by MaSa Partners and CSA Partners, with participation from Wisconsin Investment Partners, Brightstar Wisconsin, and several angel investors.

The start-up works across Sub-Saharan Africa with local farmers and communities to upcycle food ingredients and build a sustainable supply chain. This year, Agricycle launched two new brands that were distributed to over 1,000 U.S. stores. The start-up’s mission is to work with those who have typically been excluded from global food markets, including women, youth, and smallholder farmers.

Tropicoal Ignition, one of Agricycle’s brands, employs women to gather spent cassava root, coconut shells, and palm kernel shells that would normally go to waste. These ingredients are then processed and made into cooking charcoal.

In sub-Saharan Africa, about 25 to 50 percent of all produce is wasted post-harvest and before it even reaches the market. This is due to insufficient transportation, processing, drying, and storage. To combat this, Agricycle supplies solar dehydrators to small farmers and woman-led cooperatives that harvest jackfruit, mango, and pineapple. The fruit is then dried, packaged, and sold under the brand Jali Fruit Co. Each bag of dried fruit features a QR code that consumers can use to see where the ingredients were sourced from.

Whole Foods predicted that upcycled foods would be a trend this year, and the entire market is currently worth over $46.7 billion. This past April, the Upcycled Food Association launched a “Upcycled Certified” label shine the light on CPG companies focused on reducing food waste.

Agricycle will use the capital to launch its ingredient supplying business called Field Better Ingredients. The new brand will supply organic gluten-free flours made from 100 percent fruit to CPG manufacturers and bakeries.

Compound Foods Raises $4.5M to Make Synthetic Coffee

Coffee, without the bean, is what startup Compound Foods promises, and the company just raised $4.5 to help make that goal a reality. TechCrunch was first to report today that Compound has raised $4.5 million in Seed funding from investors including Lowercarbon Capital, SVLC, Humboldt Fund, Collaborative Fund, Maple VC, Petri Bio and angel investors. This brings the total amount raised by the startup to $5.3 million.

Instead of growing and harvesting coffee beans, Compound uses synthetic biology to recreate “coffee” on the molecular level. Compound Food Founder and CEO, Maricel Saenz, didn’t provide much detail to TechCrunch as to how the company re-creates coffee, but did they use sustainable ingredients and far less than the 140 liters of water it takes to grow one cup of joe.

Compound isn’t the only company using such synthetic techniques to recreate particular food and drinks. Seattle-based Atomo is also in the molecular coffee biz, making its synthetic java out of upcycled vegan ingredients. Atomo introduced a ready-to-drink cold brew canned coffee last year. Endless West makes molecular whiskey. And Climax Foods uses data and plant-based ingredients to re-create cheese.

Though it’s rather grim to think about, as the pandemic and climate change highlight how fragile our agricultural and supply chain logistics are, there is a real opportunity for synthetic food and beverage makers to grow. These companies can recreate foods we know and love with fewer land and water resources. Additionally, because these foods are manufactured in facilities and not grown outdoors, they aren’t reliant on growing seasons and are less susceptible to catastrophic weather conditions.

Of course the most important factor for any synthetic food and drink company is taste. If the finished product doesn’t taste good, all the molecules in the world won’t convince people to buy it.

Kickstarter: Bottle+ is a Waste-Free Thermos That Gives You Fizzy Water on the Go

We drink an insane amount of bubble water in our household. And while it’s all from recyclable aluminum cans, it still feels… excessive. Which is why the new Bottle+ project on Kickstarter caught my eye. The SPARK Bottle+ is a travel thermos with a built-in, re-usable CO2 chamber to fizz up your water while you’re on the go. In addition keeping your drinks as maximum fizz even as the thermos jostles around in your backpack, the Bottle+ is also waste free.

There are three main components to the SPARK Bottle+, the main drinking vessel, a portable CO2 chamber that attaches to the vessel, and a refilling station. Just like a SodaStream, you place a CO2 cylinder inside the refilling station. When you’re ready to go, affix the chamber to the thermos and press it down onto the refilling station to load your Bottle+ with CO2. When you’re out, press the button on the CO2 chamber to carbonate your water. A full chamber can make produce 15 bottles of sparkling water before needing a recharge.

The whole system is circular and reusable so there is really no waste. The bottle itself is obviously reusable, and like the SodaStream the CO2 canisters can be swapped out and turned in for refilling. Plus, there are no pods to be packaged and shipped.

Launched on August 24th, the Bottle+ campaign has already blown past it Kickstarter goal of $29, 510 and has raised more than $77,000 as of this writing (with 31 days still to go). Early backers can pick up a complete Bottle+ system for €139 (~$164 USD). According to the campaign page, the Bottle+ system will cost €179 (~$211 USD). Units will ship in June 2022.

According to Grandview Research, the global market for sparkling water is valued at $29.71 billion, and projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.6 percent from this year to 2028. So Bottle+ is certainly launching at the right time.

The entire hydration space is actually chock-a-block with companies vying to improve the water you drink and how you drink it. In March of this year, Pani launched a crowdfunding campaign for its water filter/mineralizer/flavor pod system. Earlier this month, Cirkul raised $36 million for its reusable water bottle and flavor cartridge combo. And just last week, drink giant PepsiCo announced that it was bringing its SodaStream Pro fizzy water dispenser to college campuses.

As with any Kickstarter project, backing it is definitely buyer beware. There is a big difference between developing a prototype and scaling up to mass production — just ask the backers of Rite-Press and iGulu. However, if Bottle+ can pull it off, that will be a definite plus for the planet and for soda water addicts like me.

Small Robot Company Crowdfunds £4M for its Ag Robots

British agriculture robot company, Small Robot Company, announced today that it has raised £4 million (~$5.5M USD) through its equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. This brings the total amount for funding raised by Small Robot to £11 million (~$15.12M USD).

Small Robot Company uses a combination of robotics and artificial intelligence to help farmers manage their fields. Small Robot makes a trio of robots dubbed, Tom, Dick and Harry that map fields, zap weeds, and do no-till drilling, respectively. The whole system is tied together with the Wima AI that uses computer vision to identify weeds and gather per-plant intelligence.

This is Small Robot’s fourth trip to the crowdfunding well, and this particular campaign got off to strong start in July when the company raised £2M (~$2.75M USD) on its first day. Small Robot isn’t the only ag robotics company going the equity crowdfunding route. Future Acres, which makes an autonomous driving platform for a number of farm is crowdfunding as well.

Agriculture is an area that is ripe for automation as the industry faces ongoing labor shortages and extremely harsh working conditions. Robots can work in the fields in extreme heat all day without injury or sickness, and can bring precision to tasks such as weeding to reduce the need for harsh herb and pesticides.

One indicator of the opportunity in agriculture automation is the fact that Bear Flag Robotics, which makes autonomous driving technology for tractors, was acquired by John Deere earlier this month for $250 million.

If you’d like to learn more about the state or agriculture and robotics, watch the video from the “Crops and Robots: How Automation is Changing Agriculture” panel we held at our ArticulATE food robotics conference in May that featured Aubrey Donnellan, Founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics (Spoon Plus subscription required).

Coco Raises $36M Series A for Teleoperated Robot Delivery

Coco, a teleoperated robot delivery service, announced today that it has raised a Series A round of funding led by Sam Altman, Silicon Valley Bank and Founder’s Fund.

Launched a year ago, Coco makes a four-wheeled, cooler-sized robot that delivers food and beverages. Coco prepositions its robot at merchant locations in dense city environments, and advertises that it completes deliveries in 30 minutes or less.

Unlike other delivery robots like those from Starship and Yandex, Coco’s robots are not self-driving and are instead piloted remotely. As with Tortoise, another teleoperated delivery robot, by foregoing autonomy, Coco can get to market faster because it doesn’t have to deal with the same state and city regulations around self-driving vehicles.

According to the company’s Careers page, those driving the robots are called “Coconauts,” and Coco is currently hiring remote drivers for Hawaii, Nevada, and Texas. Responsibilities include “Remotely drive a robot: carefully and responsibly” and “Follow a map to and from your destinations.” Under Qualifications, Coco asks that you have a “Reliable, high-speed internet connection,” and “Experience playing racing video games” (hopefully not just Mario Kart).

Coco is raising money at the right time as the food and restaurant world is accelerating its interest in robots and automation. Sweetgreen just acquired the robot restaurant Spyce, and 800 Degrees Pizza will launch 3,600 Piestro-powered robot pizza making vending machines over the next five years.

Robot delivery itself is poised to take off. As Ali Kashani, Co-Founder and CEO of robot delivery company Serve likes to say — you don’t need a two-ton car on the road to deliver a taco. With their smaller footprint, delivery robots can help ease congestion on the road by removing unnecessary full-sized delivery cars. With its new funding, Coco will be able to get its robots on the sidewalks (and provide humans with “driving” gigs), and scale up to more cities sooner than some of its competition.

Ai Palette Raises $4.4M USD for Trend-Predicting Tech

Singapore-based Ai Palette announced today that it has raised $4.4 million USD in an oversubscribed Series A round. The round was co-led by Exfinity Venture Partners and pi Ventures, with participation from Anthill Ventures and return investors VC AgFunder and Decacorn Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $5.5 million USD.

Ai Palette uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to help CPG and food companies predict consumer trends as they emerge. The company’s first product is called Foresight Engine, which can track a trend’s future trajectory, consumers driving it, and its maturity. The machine learning platform recognizes 15 different languages and can process data from various sources including images.

It is estimated that approximately 10,000 new CPG products are released each year, and within two years, 85 percent of these products will fail. Staying ahead of trends can help companies differentiate from competitors, directly target consumer preferences, and time product launches.

The use of AI and machine learning can help identify trends early, and speed up the R&D process. In turn, this can help food companies bring their product to market faster. Besides Ai Palette, several other companies offer trend-predicting services including Tastewise, Spoonshot, Halla, and Analytical Flavor Systems.

Besides emerging trends, these services can additionally predict taste preferences in different regions of the world. For example, Ai Palette analyzed 1.2 billion data points to track beverage trends in the U.S., Canada, India, and Southeast Asia during the summertime. It was found that in the U.S., the use of acerola cherry in juice drinks has experienced a year-over-year growth rate of 254 percent.

Ai Palette will use its new capital to expand its customer base outside of Asia, recruit new data science and engineering talent, and develop new product lines.

Orbisk Raises €1.05M for its Food Waste Fighting AI for Restaurants

Food waste fighting startup Orbisk announced today that it has raised a €1.05 million (~$1.23M USD) Seed round of funding. The round was led by FoodSparks by PeakBridge, with participation from EIT Food, and existing investors DOEN Participaties, and Brabantse Ontwikkelings Maatschappij.

Based in the Netherlands, Orbisk makes a computer vision based system for foodservice operators to identify and cut down on food waste. Restaurants and cafeterias install Orbisk’s hardware at their primary waste bin, and kitchen staff hold food being tossed out underneath the Orbisk camera. Using artificial intelligence, Orbisk automatically identifies the food while a scale weighs how much of it is being thrown out.

As we covered recently, Orbisk’s computer vision and AI system is powered in part with the help of data company Sama. As Orbisk came to market, its cameras captured thousands of images of different types of food to train its AI. Sama worked to structure that data so the algorithms could learn what items like “noodles” or “broccoli” looked like.

The system works for both pre- and post-preparation. For instance, restaurants can monitor what type food and how much of it expires before it even gets cooked. Or for more buffet style restaurants, the system can monitor how much of a particular dish is leftover.

Food waste is a big problem for the world. According to the United Nations Environment Program, about one-third of food produced in the world for human consumption (roughly 1.3 billion tons) gets lost or wasted. That’s inexcusable when there are so many food insecure populations around the world.

Thankfully there are a number of companies around the world tackling the problem. Orbisk isn’t even the only startup to offer such a system for commercial kitchens. Over in the UK, Winnow makes a system similar to that from Orbisk.

The pitch from Orbisk and others like it is simple. By monitoring what food gets thrown out, restaurants and cafeterias not only reduce the amount of good food going into the garbage, they also save money by not spending it on food that customers don’t want.

Orbisk Co-Founder and CEO, Olaf van der Veen told me by video chat this week that his company’s system is currently being used by 50 restaurants right now, and reducing the food waste of its customers by an average of 40 – 50 percent. With its new funding, Orbisk plans to continue developing its product, scale internationally and be in a couple hundred establishments by the end of this year.

The Week in Food Tech Funding: Apeel’s Quarter Bil, Bug Farm Beta Hatch Snatches $10M

The waning days of August usually mean a slowdown in news, but not so in the red hot food tech space. This week’s food tech funding news includes (yet another) quarter-billion round for food waste unicorn Apeel, a bug farm’s fresh $10 million, and the continued steady drumbeat of funding going into ghost kitchens.

Apeel’s Appeal

Food waste reduction continues to garner investor interest and food-life extension startup Apeel is leading the pack. The company, which announced this week it had raised a $250 million Series E, plans to use its new funds to ramp up operations for 10 new supply networks over the next year to add to its already impressive 30 food suppliers and 40 retailers in 8 countries.

The new funding round comes just a year after its celebrity-infused (Oprah, Katie Perry) Series D – also for $250 million – and brings the company’s total funding to $635 million at a $2 billion valuation. That makes Apeel the most highly valued startup in food waste prevention, above Imperfect Foods (valued at $700 million in January of this year).

Apeel’s, um, appeal is that life-extension technology is perhaps one of the most effective tools to fight food waste at grocery stores, which throw away about one-third of produce in any given year. Apeel isn’t the only player in the space as Hazel and Ryp Labs (the 2019 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase winner) also have life-extension tech, but Apeel is the one with far and away the most market traction.

I’ll be watching to see if Apeel uses its funding and strong market position to continue to expand its product portfolio beyond its core life-extension coating technology. This year’s acquisition of hyperspectral imaging company ImpactVision was a move in that direction, and I can see the company making more adjacent moves under the broader food waste prevention umbrella.

Ghost Kitchens/Virtual Restaurants

C3, $10 Million: C3, a virtual restaurant startup that operates 40 different concepts as part of its virtual food hall concept, has secured a $10 million strategic investment from private equity firm TriArtisan Capital Advisors. The investment, announced this week, is part of a larger $80 million series B funding round announced last month.

BigSpoon Foods, $2 Million: BigSpoon Foods, a ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant operator based in India, has raised a $2 million pre-Series A round from Dubai-based NB Ventures. BigSpoon runs its own kitchens in a number of mid-sized (what it calls tier 2) cities and also has a portfolio of virtual restaurant brands. It offers a “digital franchise” model that turnkeys a new franchise with a ghost kitchen facility and an arsenal of delivery-only restaurant brands for approximately $20 thousand per location.

Bug Farms

Beta Hatch, $10 Million: Cashmere Washington-based mealworm farm raised a $10 million funding round which it plans to use to expand production at its flagship production facility east of Seattle. Beta Hatch’s 42 thousand square foot facility produces mealworms for use in feed for livestock and pets and plans to use its cash infusion to increase production by 10x over the next year.

Alt Protein

Melt&Marble, €750,000: Melt&Marble, formerly known as Biopetrolia, announced this week it had raised a €750,000 (~$876,000 USD) seed round to further develop its fermentation-based fats for plant-based foods. M&M and others like Motif are building out the toolbox for plant-based meat brands to make their products more meat-like.

Shandi, $700,000: Singapore-based Shandi, a maker of plant-based chicken analogs (including shreds, pieces, strips, and drumsticks), has raised a $700 thousand seed round. This round, its second seed round, was led by the large Singaporean food conglomerate Tolaram Group.

Delivery & Marketplaces

Trifecta, $20 Million: Organic meal kit startup Trifecta has raised a $20 million Series B. While many first-gen meal kit startups fizzled, some of the entrants’ focus on health and sustainability seems to be gaining traction. Trifecta, Thistle, and Freshrealm have all raised funding rounds this year, which means the category has moved beyond the cold-shoulder many of them got after the disappointing Blue Apron IPO and closures of companies like Chef’d and Plated. As for what it plans to do with the money, Trifecta will expand its meal offerings and hopes to (perhaps ill-advisedly)become ‘Peleton of Nutrition’ with an expanded set of digital offerings.

Do you have funding news? Drop us a line and let us know.

Melt&Marble Raises €750K Seed Round for its Fermentation-Based Fats

Melt&Marble, formerly known as Biopetrolia, announced today that it has raised a €750,000 (~$876,000 USD) seed round to further develop its fermentation-based fats for plant-based foods. Nordic FoodTech VC led the round with participation from Paulig’s venture arm PINC, Purple Orange Ventures, and Chalmers Ventures.

In addition to the funding, the company is also debuting its new name, branding and direction. Under its previous name Biopetrolia, Melt&Marble used fermentation to create advanced biofuels. But as Anastasia Krivoruchko, Co-Founder and CEO of Melt&Marble explained to me via video chat this week, “We were looking at what our technology could do and saw we produce fatty acids at very high levels.” Additionally, not only were they producing fatty acids, but they could also adjusts the fermented fats to produce a variety of outcomes.

Melt&Marble is an ingredient company, so it will use this ability to manipulate fermented fats to produce a wide range of fats for other plant-based meat manufacturers. It can create fats specifically for plant-based beef, pork other meat analogues. It can also adapt its fat to work better with specific plant-based proteins such as soy, or peas. Because it is tweaking these compounds from the ground up, Melt&Marble can also change the nature of the fats created to deliver different textures, melting points, or even replace bad fats with healthier ones.

Plant-based proteins grab all the headlines, but developing the right kind of fats to go with it is equally as important for meat analogues. Other companies looking to develop plant-based fats include Australia’s Nourish Ingredients, which also uses fermentation to create fats, and Motif Foodworks, which was developing plant-based fats in partnership with the University of Guleph in Canada.

Meat&Marble itself is spun out of research done at Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden. Krivoruchko said that the company expects to have its first prototype done by the end of the year.

Apeel Raises $250 Million to Accelerate Its Fight Against Food Waste

Apeel, best known for its shelf-life-extension technology for produce, has raised a $250 million Series E round of funding led by Temasek.

Additional participants include Mirae Asset Global Investments, GIC, Viking Global Investors, Disruptive, Andreessen Horowitz, Tenere Capital, Sweetwater Private Equity, Tao Capital Partners, K3 Ventures, David Barber of Almanac Insights, Michael Ovitz of Creative Artists Agency, Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, Susan Wojcicki of YouTube, and Katy Perry. The round brings Apeel’s total funding to date to over $635 million, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

The company’s food-safe powder coating was developed to cover pieces of produce, such as avocados, and act as a barrier against water and oxygen, which are major contributors to rot. Apeel will use the new funding in part to expand the availability of its coating product to additional parts of the U.S., U.K., and Europe. The company currently works with 40 retailers and 30 suppliers throughout eight different countries.

Earlier this year, Apeel acquired hyperspectral imaging company ImpactVision to add another layer of information about plant ripeness to its process. The advanced imaging technology can essentially look inside each piece of fruit and gather information about maturity, freshness, and phytonutrient content. With this information, suppliers and distributors can decide where each piece of produce can then go. For example, a more mature piece can go to a retailer closer by, so it can reach the store shelf sooner.

Apeel said today it will also use the new funds to advance such data and imaging capabilities and integrate those capabilities deeper into its system. The company suggested there could be more acquisitions in this area in the future. 

In the U.S. alone, 35 percent of all food produced goes to waste, equalling about $408 billion annually and 4 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gases. At the same time, more than 40 million Americans are considered food insecure. Recent data from Project Drawdown found reducing food waste to be first of 76 solutions meant to reverse climate change, ahead of plant-based diets and utility-scale solar projects. 

Apeel’s edible coating is one method of fighting food waste. Others include Hazel Technology’s sachet that extends produce shelf life and Ryp Labs (née StixFresh), which makes a sticker that does much the same thing.

“Suppliers have a clock that’s ticking,” Apeel CEO James Rogers explained last year at a Spoon event. At the end of the day, he said, “we have to make the most environmentally beneficially solution the cheapest, easiest solution.”