The agrifood-tech venture capital platform’s recently-released Agrifoodtech Mid-Year Investment Review found that investment in start-ups in the ‘innovative foods’ space, which it defines as encompassing ‘cultured meat, plant-based and fermented proteins, and novel ingredients’ —increased markedly between 1 January and 30 June 2020.
An already growing appetite for alt-proteins was boosted by the impact of COVID-19 on food supply chains and on the livestock processing industry.
Innovative food was the third-most funded category in AgFunder’s list for the first half of 2020, pushing out ‘restaurant marketplaces’. In the year’s first six months, funding in this category surpassed (albeit narrowly) the 2019 total, with innovative food start-ups raising $1.1 billion across 93 deals – including one with US-based Impossible Foods worth a whopping $500m.
That said, several smaller start-ups also did well, with AgFunder reporting a median innovative food deal size for the period of $2 million.
On the ‘top deals’ list were start-ups in the alt-protein and alt-dairy spaces, mainly ‘relatively mature players’ from the US: Memphis Meats, Nature’s Fynd, Good Catch, and MycoTechnology raised ‘sizeable’ funding rounds.
A number of newer entrants also made it onto that list, including AgFunder portfolio company Alpha Foods; ByHeart, conducting breast-milk research in a bid to improve baby formula; and personal nutrition start-up YFood, developing customised snack bars and drinks.
Further information
Check out AgFunder’s top 10 highest-funded innovative food start-ups for January-June 2020 here.
For a more detailed breakdown, read the full Agrifoodtech Mid-Year Investment Review.
Source: Innovative Food startups raised more in H1 2020 than they did in the whole of 2019 I AgFunder News