Global technology and appliance giant Samsung has accelerated its presence in food tech with the acquisition of UK-based food tech platform Whisk. Founded in 2012, Whisk’s platform uses AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and deep learning to analyze how people around the world interact with ingredients and recipes to help global brands and retailers connect with […]
Omnivore Partners, Blume Ventures, and BEENEXT have led a $2 million Seed Round for Indian agtech and robotics platform TartanSense. Additional investors participating in the round include Dileep George, co-founder of Vicarious AI, which is backed by Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos; Akash Gupta and Samay Kohli, co-founders of GreyOrange, and Kush Jawahar from Featherlite. […]
Chilean plant-based food startup NotCo has closed a $30 million funding round led by London-based The Craftory, and including Bezos Expedition, the family office investment arm of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, MAYA CAPITAL, and return investors Kaszek Ventures and IndieBio. This marks the first investment in Latin America for Bezos. And although the company valuation […]
Aroma Bit, a Tokyo-based deep technology startup, has raised JPY250 million (US$2.23 million) through a Series A led by existing investor, the Sony Innovation Fund, the venture capital arm of Sony Corporation. Led by CEO Shunichiro Kuroki, who founded the company in 2014, Aroma Bit develops low-cost, compact digital sensors that identify and create visual […]
iUNU, a Seattle-based startup that develops computer vision and SaaS-based artificial intelligence applications for the greenhouse and indoor farming industries, announced it has secured $7.5 million in funding from BootstrapLabs, NCT Ventures, and others. Commercial greenhouse operators are tasked with steep challenges – to balance a wide range of conditions such as temperature, humidity, crop […]
Boston-based biotech leader Ginkgo Bioworks announced the launch of Motif Ingredients, a food tech startup focused on the development of next-generation alternative proteins and other ingredients for global food companies. “We started putting Motif together around February or March of 2018,” Jason Kakoyiannis, business development at Ginkgo and a director of Motif, told Tech Crunch. “The […]
BASF Venture Capital has committed $2 million to Alchemist Accelerator’s fund. At least half of the investment will be earmarked to fund agtech, nutrition, material informatics, and 3D printing startups. This investment will help accelerate BASF’s engagement with technologies including AI, robotics, and the Internet of Things. “Digitalization represents unprecedented opportunities to create value for […]
Macquarie Venture Capital Studio (MVCS), a fund launched in partnership by Macquarie Capital and R/GA Ventures, has announced a commitment to Teralytic, a soil analytics company working to help farmers grow more while using less. With the goal of “driving innovation at the intersection of infrastructure and technology”, MVCS announced investments in three companies: Teralytic; […]
California-based early-stage tech investor CerraCap has made an undisclosed investment in AgShift, the developer of the world’s first AI food inspection system. Founded by company CEO Miku Jha, AgShift is working to instill objectivity and consistency, and to remove bias in the food safety space. Employing computer vision and cloud-based deep learning models, AgShift’s technology […]
UK-based Wheatsheaf Group, the investment unit of the Grosvenor Estate, has acquired a 90 percent stake in Purfresh, a provider of specialized climate control technology designed to reduce food waste during shipping. Based in San Francisco, Purfresh reduces the risk of high-value cargo loss through the combination of controlled atmosphere and active atmosphere with ozone […]
