Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Jeff Bezos

Plant-Based Food Co. NotCo Gets $30M from Investors Including Jeff Bezos

NotCo, a Chile-based startup that uses AI to create plant-based versions of dairy products, has raised $30 million led by The Craftory investment fund, with participation from Jeff Bezo’s Bezos Expeditions (h/t FoodBev Media).

At the heart of NotCo is Giuseppe, the company’s artificial intelligence platform that analyzes food on a molecular level to re-create the flavors and textures of traditional foods. The company’s Not Mayo is made with potatoes, peas, basil, and canola oil rather than vegetable oil and eggs.

NotCo’s mayo is currently available in more than 1,000 stores in Chile. The new money will be used to fund new products like plant-based milk and ice cream, as well as expand into new markets such as Mexico and the U.S. later this year.

Investors have shown a pretty big appetite for plant-based products like NotCo’s, and it’s not hard to see why. Increased awareness around the ethical and environmental issues associated with meat and dairy consumption have more people re-thinking their diets and sales of plant-based products are soaring. But perhaps more importantly, plant-based alternatives have gotten really good.

via GIPHY

This combination of factors have led to companies like Impossible Foods raising $387.5 million, Beyond Meat raising $122 million (and going public), and more recently, Motif raised $90 million to help even more startups use plant-based ingredients.

But it’s not just startups, BIG FOOD (as my colleague, Catherine Lamb likes to call it), is plant-based muscling in on the act as well. Nestle has introduced its own version of the Impossible burger (dubbed the Incredible burger), Unilever bought the Vegetarian Butcher, and chicken king, Tyson is planning its own plant-based food products.

NotCo is also riding another high-tech trend: artificial intelligence for food/flavor creation and molecular food construction. Companies like Tastewise, Analytical Flavor Systems and even spice giant, McCormick are using the power of artificial intelligence to power the development of new flavors.

It’s safe to say that with all this interest and investment in companies like NotCo means plant-based startups are not going to stop anytime soon.

With Big Names Behind It, Plenty Aims To Rule the Vertical Farming Market

A $200 million investment in indoor farming startup Plenty has caught the attention of venture capitalists and those who follow the emerging world of tech-driven, commercial indoor farming. What separates the San Francisco-based agtech company from other indoor farming manufacturers is its claim to be able to grow everything except for tree fruit (lemons, oranges, etc…) and root vegetables. The vast majority of competitors focus solely on greens, herbs, strawberries and the occasional tomato.

Perhaps of even greater significant than its crop yield are the profiles of Plenty’s new investors. The high profile roster for this latest round include Softbank CEO, Masayoshi Son, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. Attached to each new investor comes an opportunity. For example, Son could bring Plenty to Japan and the rest of Asia. Schmidt’s VC firm Innovation Endeavors has CropX in its portfolio which boasts an adjacent technology that offers adaptive crop irrigation.

Bezos, on the other hand, stands out because of Amazon’s recent purchase of Whole Foods. The intersection of Plenty with bricks and mortar stores, home delivery of groceries, restaurant delivery and meal kits is a near harmonic convergence. Controlling a prime part of the value chain that goes from farm to table or farm to home puts Amazon in a prime position to level its competitors in a number of markets.

The implementations of Plenty with Whole Foods run from the obvious to the imaginative. It’s easy to see Amazon being able to offer premium produce directly to customers via home delivery, but it also could use Plenty to draw more people into its retail stores. Taking a page from Infarm, which has its indoor farm in a Berlin supermarket, Whole Foods adding sleek vertical farms to its stores would be a lure to its clientele—a predominately upscale  group prone to loving shiny, new objects. Not only would shoppers take notice of this high-touch addition, the farms would have the practical objective of selling fresh goods to fussy shoppers.

Whole Foods’ profile perfectly fits this scenario. In past years, innovation was the company’s strong suit. The Austin-based chain was among the first premium supermarkets to feature in-store, full-service restaurants as well as bars featuring local brews on tap. Noted for working closely with local farmers, it would make sense for Whole Foods to select local organic growers to take ownership of and maintain the Plenty-built vertical farms.

Whole Foods and Amazon could make for an exciting team in advancing the commercial aspects of Plenty. With Softbank’s Son in the mix, Japan and Asia are a solid target for expansion, but Europe is a far larger and more immediate major opportunity. One sign of that Europe is a hot agtech market is seen via Germany’s darling, Infarm. Infarm’s successful implementation in Berlin also has caught the attention of investors and partners. Now working with German grocery chain, EDEKA, Infarm has recently closed a four million Euro round led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures.

Showing his astute understanding of the market for its vertical farming technology, Infarm co-founder Osnat Michaeli outlines how her company’s growth has defined the future of indoor farming in Europe and beyond.

“When we started out, we were looked at as ‘idealistic dreamers’. In part, this might have been because we were self-taught and not many believed that we had the necessary expertise needed to invent a new agricultural solution,” Michaeli told TechCrunch in a recent interview.

“The challenge [now] is in finding the right partners. Our initial focus is on supermarket chains, online food retailers, wholesalers, hotels, and other food-related businesses, for whom the superior quality and range of produce — with no fluctuation in costs — makes Infarm an attractive partner. In return, we can reintroduce the joy of growing to the urban population”.

Image credit: Flickr user Euro Slice under creative commons license