European food tech startups raised $6.3 billion in 2022 — down from $10.9 billion in 2021, but up from $3.2 billion in 2020. Getir’s shopping $768 million Series E Fundraising in March 2022 topped the list as the biggest round of the year, according to Dealroom, and Austria’s food-tech ecosystem made the most progress globally, with equity investments- risk multiplied by 11.
The early-stage scene is also progressing: foodtech ends the year as the third best financed sector in the seed phase in Europe in December, with a total of 34 million euros.
As we head into 2023, which food technologies should be on your radar? Sifted asked five investors to share the startups they think everyone will soon want a bite to eat — the only caveat is that they can’t be holding companies.
Christian Guba — director at FoodLabs
FoodLabs is a Berlin-based venture capital startup that invests in food, health and sustainability startups.
Global Root
Root Global is a next-generation carbon accounting and sourcing startup focused on the food supply chain. Just over a third of greenhouse gas emissions between 1990 and 2015 were food-related, according to a study 2021, and there is great potential for food producers and groups to reduce emissions by selecting and analyzing the right suppliers, which Root Global’s datasets, custom climate strategies and transparent sustainability reports aim to help companies to reach.
food in prose
Molecular farming is one of the most promising technologies aimed at producing true animal proteins using plants as hosts. Prose Foods is building a platform that uses computational biology to discover and express proteins in plants, and is led by an award-winning Stanford researcher.
Ark Biotech
According to the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, 1.5 million tons of cultured meat are expected to be produced by 2030. Better bioreactors and bioprocesses tailored to animal cells are therefore needed to increase production. Ark is developing affordable bioreactors suitable for use in the industrial production of cultured meat to solve the capacity problem.
Julienne Bruno
Plant-based cheese is struggling to gain consumer adoption, primarily due to the taste disparity with the dairy alternative. But Julienne Bruno has found a way to make dairy-free alternatives to burrata and stracciatella nearly indistinguishable from real cheese.
Nadim El Khazen — partner, PeakBridge VC
PeakBridge is a global agritech and foodtech investor with approximately €200 million in assets under management. Targets include seeding Series B companies at the intersection of climate, health and food.
WNWN Food Laboratories
London-based WNWN Food Labs (pronounced “win-win”) is developing a delicious and scalable alternative chocolate product without the harmful impact of the cocoa industry, which relies on deforestation and child labor. WNWN’s proprietary precision fermentation technology can create a full range of ethical, sustainable and resilient chocolate alternatives while using local and abundant ingredients, such as barley.
Relive
Revyve recycles yeast from the side streams of the world’s largest breweries. Through its proprietary process, the company creates simple, sustainable proteins and fibers with unique functional properties that can replace animal-derived ingredients and E-numbers. By circularly sourcing raw materials from partners companies such as AB InBev, Revyve does not need to grow biomass.
Carob
CarobWay seeks to maximize the potential of the carob fruit worldwide. Combining agritech and foodtech solutions, it aims to fill a gap in supply and introduce new applications for this superfood, ranging from offering an alternative to synthetic sweeteners and functional proteins to potentially usable properties for wellness products. Carob is a key ingredient in dairy products and a highly sustainable crop that requires very little water and no cold storage after harvest.
Hyperplane
Hyperplan is a SaaS company based in Paris. Its mission is to support the expectations of the agri-food industry and to compensate for an increasingly volatile agricultural supply. Hyperplan’s technology, based on satellite and meteorological data, enables agri-food players to make informed tactical and strategic choices for the success of their commercial or industrial operations. This includes economic efficiency, optimization of CO2 intensity and reduction of food losses.
Eléonore Lafonta — partner at Five Seasons Ventures
Five Seasons Ventures is a leading pan-European food technology venture capital fund investing in Series A stage companies.
Peraliment
Perfood is a German startup working on blood sugar monitoring with various applications, as research has shown that many chronic diseases are linked to blood sugar levels. Its first reimbursed solution concerns migraines: the team has developed a solution that allows patients to treat migraines without medication. Its long-term vision is to become a one-stop platform to support patients with chronic diseases.
Seafood restart
A French start-up working on alternatives to seafood products, Seafood Reboot, a spin-off from algae specialist Algama, is developing a range of plant-based seafood products. It creates everything from salmon and spreads to tuna, using seaweed as its main ingredient.
Hubcycle
This French company transforms waste into the ingredients of tomorrow. It uses an automated platform to connect a business with food waste to another business that needs the clippings to make its own new product – for example, leftover orange peel from making orange juice can be used to make orange flavored extract.
Jean-Gabriel Tarnaud — project manager at Döhler Ventures
Döhler Ventures invests in early-stage startups in the nutrition and technology ecosystem worldwide.
EvodiaBio
EvodiaBio is a Danish startup that creates flavors through fermentation. Currently, the production of these compounds involves intensive agriculture or the need to synthesize them in a complex process, which is why EvodiaBio has created a more natural and sustainable way of producing aromas. He started by replacing fresh hops, pellets or hop oil – ingredients normally used to make beer – with yeast-derived flavorings in the brewing process to give non-alcoholic beers a truer taste. .
BettaF!sh
BettaF!sh is a German startup offering a full range of products based on its tuna plant ingredient, “Tu-Nah”, created from fava beans. With current products such as sandwiches, pizzas and spreads, the company combines food technology with compelling branding.
Factory B
Plant B is another German startup, focused on producing plant-based alternatives for eggs. Based on lupins, the product is a liquid intended to be incorporated into your everyday recipes, while behaving like an ordinary egg and bringing structure and richness to your dishes.
mondra
British startup Mondra is focused on creating transparency in the ecological footprint of products, as consumers and producers are increasingly interested in understanding their impact on the environment. Through its platform, it is able to measure the impact of a product throughout its lifecycle and provide guidance through data-driven insights and benchmarks.
Eden Organic
Another UK startup, Eden Bio operates at the intersection of biology and information technology. Its machine learning program can improve the yield of produced proteins for companies using fermentation to create proteins, by finding the ideal combination of microorganism genetic engineering processes.
Gustaf Brandberg — partner at Gullspång Re:food
Gullspång Re:food is a for-profit, evergreen investment company in Stockholm and San Francisco, investing in early growth stage companies that support the transition to sustainable protein and fat, healthy diets , sustainable supply chains and healthy soils.
The Mediterranean food laboratory
The Mediterranean Food Lab (MFL) is a next generation flavor house, producing clean flavor ingredients from food waste using fermentation with ingredients such as grains, legumes and vegetables. The main obstacle limiting the adoption of plant-based alternatives is taste, an issue that MFL hopes to solve by creating more appealing flavors to use in alternative protein production.
Heura Foods
Heura Foods has a broad portfolio of plant-based products with strong brand loyalty in the Iberian Peninsula, producing a range of alternative protein products like chicken burgers, nuggets and chorizo. Its products are largely composed of pea and soy proteins without genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Onego Bio
Onego Bio uses precision fermentation to produce animal-free egg white in a safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly way. He introduces cultured microflora organisms into a bioreactor with cells that prompt him to produce egg white instead of his usual protein, eliminating the need for a chicken.
Planet A
Founded by two siblings, Planet A produces cocoa-free and palm-oil-free chocolate – dubbed Nocoa – by fermenting plant-based materials. The process means chocolate can be produced locally rather than using limited land resources or exploiting labour. The palm oil alternative, Nocoa Butter, can also be used as an ingredient on its own.
Sadia Nowshin is an editorial assistant at Sifted. She tweets from @sadianowshin_