Last week, I headed down to San Francisco to check out the Future Food Tech conference, one of the leading gatherings in food innovation, where investors, startups, and big food brands come together to share ideas, commiserate, and network.
I attended this year’s event to gauge the current state of future food and assess if the industry had rebounded from last year’s somewhat somber mood, marked by cash-strapped startups—primarily in the alt-protein space—focusing on extending their financial runways amid a venture investment “winter.”
The good news: the overall mood is improving despite a rapidly shifting regulatory and governmental landscape, particularly in the U.S. Also, the industry has pivoted, in a fairly significant way, away from a pretty substantial over-indexing on alt-proteins as the key investment focus.
Below are my key takeaways, featuring some quotes from some of the experts who were at the show.
Dialed Down Alt-Proteins and More Discriminating Investors
First off, let’s get something straight: Alt protein is still important and on everyone’s mind at FFT and across the future food industry, but it’s just not the singular dominating focus anymore. Investors and entrepreneurs appear increasingly aware of the substantial regulatory, economic, scaling, and consumer adoption hurdles that many alt-protein products face.
At the same, many of the big investment funds and venture investors who got pulled into food tech during the bubble in 2019 to 2022 have pulled away from the space. While it means less investment dollars to fund, say, a pilot plant for a cultivated meat company that may be years away from coming to market, it also means fewer investment dollars are chasing me-too business plans.
“Everybody outside this sector was excited about Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat and thought all this stuff was going to change the game,” said Brian Frank, founder of FTW Ventures. “When all of us that were rationalists were going, ‘No, guys, it’s food. It is this.’ And so we’re coming back to this, and a lot of the tourist investors are leaving.”
Differentiated Players in Cultivated Meat Keep Pushing Boulder Up the Hill
Despite these challenges, some companies continue to talk up their advances in cultivated meat. One such company was Forsea, a company specializing in making cultivated unagi.
After signing the standard legal disclaimer waiving future litigation rights (typical at cultivated meat tastings—one investor told me he’s signed about twenty-five of them), I sampled Forsea’s cultivated unagi. It was good! The taste was pretty spot on, and the mouthfeel was about 90% there.
Another company that was pretty visible at FFT last week was Mission Barns, which had just received its ‘no questions’ letter from the FDA for its cultivated pork fat and was inviting people to try it out at tastings. While I wasn’t added to their tasting invite list, attendees who I spoke to who sampled their meatballs spoke highly of them.
Meeting the MAHA Moment: A Focus on Better Health Outcomes Becomes Primary Driver
It shouldn’t be overly surprising that the event’s focus has shifted from sustainability alone toward creating better, healthier food inputs. This adjustment reflects broader regulatory and business climates in the U.S., where food companies are adapting to an FDA and USDA potentially influenced by the likes of RFK Jr.
This new direction acknowledges the increasingly challenging regulatory environment for cultivated meat—now banned in states like Florida—while recognizing heightened consumer and governmental interest in clean labels and nutrition-focused, less futuristic food categories.
One company that aligns well with this trend is Borealis. Founder Reza Soltanzadeh emphasized the concept of “stealth health”—enhancing familiar foods with added nutritional value, like with their protein-rich pastas.
“Changing consumer behavior, like ordering a plant-based Big Mac at McDonald’s, is incredibly challenging,” Soltanzadeh explained. “But stealth health means your child shouldn’t even notice a difference from their regular ramen.”
AI is Tablestakes Now, But Beware the AI-Washing
Artificial intelligence was everywhere, both in on-stage panels and in hallway side conversations. Longtime pioneers in the space held court in packed rooms while new startups tried to talk up their AI bona fides.
As someone who created the first dedicated event a couple of years ago to explore how AI will change food, I’m not surprised at just how fast it has permeated the entire consciousness of the food industry executive class. After all, most of us, just being a person living in society, find it nearly impossible to get away from the AI-is-changing-everything conversation.
Still, the sheer amount of AI-food conversation was perhaps even more than I expected, and I imagine the heads of many in attendance were probably spinning as they tried to determine what exactly is a true innovation in food AI and what is simply a form of AI-washing.
I interviewed Matias Muchnick, CEO of NotCo, who warned startups against overstating their AI expertise: “Ultimately, claiming AI capabilities you don’t genuinely possess is a short-lived lie. Like greenwashing, AI-washing will eventually catch up with you.”
That said, it’s still exciting to see the potential. AI applications demonstrated at Future Food-Tech ranged from toxin detection to personalized nutritional recommendations.
As Megan Thomas, podcaster and future food consultant wrote: “Distinguishing meaningful innovations from hype remains a challenge, but the real-world applications of AI in food—from health to supply chains—are undeniably compelling.”
Fiber is Having Its Moment as GLP-1s Grips The Food Industry
Outside of AI everywhere, the most interesting trend to me was the pervasiveness of the impact that GLP-1s is having on both startup investment and overall focus in the space.
Peter Bodenheimer, venture partner at PeakBridge, wrote that “fiber is everywhere and continues to have its moment, with startups focused on new functional elements, improved formats, and data-driven discovery.”
What’s interesting is the divergence in conversation that is happening societally and within the food space. Ozempic and other GLP-1s have become household names and a part of the larger cultural conversation as folks on social media try to guess which celebrity on the red carpet is taking GLP-1s, the food industry is moving beyond last year’s initial panic to proactively optimize products for GLP-1 compatibility.
A wave of startups, including One.Bio, SuperGut, and Carbiotix, have emerged, offering platforms enabling CPG brands to enhance their fiber content and position products as GLP-1-friendly alternatives to pharmaceutical interventions.
I spoke with Carbiotix chairman Kristofer Cook, who described the company’s efforts in helping major brands integrate gut-healthy fiber through on-premise food side-stream upcycling. This two-birds-one-stone approach sounded like a pretty nifty trick, particularly for those brands who didn’t want to become reliant on startup’s nutraceutical to fortify their food.
Companies using their platform are “extracting more value from a side stream, which is typically set the way for animal feed,” said Cook. “They’re making their products healthier. And they’re able to market themselves as being more sustainable as well.”
Looking Forward
The bottom line is it seemed like, despite the shifting terrain underfoot from a regulatory standpoint and the continued fundraising headwinds, that food startups are finding their way. Those remaining in ths space are becoming increasingly pragmatic about the realities of innovation adoption, investment sustainability, and regulatory navigation. The exuberance over cultivated protei has been tempered by a clear-eyed recognition of consumer behavior, economic constraints, and the long-term role of health-centric innovation.
Looking forward, if this year’s FFT is any indication, it seems food tech innovation is now being defined more by clear-eyed realism, a focus on finding practical food-driven health interventions, and an embrace around accelerating innovation through the use of technologies like AI.
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