Marco D'Angelo

🥇Here is DigitalFoodLab's European AgriFoodTech Top 50. Each year, we gather all the data that we have at DigitalFoodLab on FoodTech startups and elaborate a list of the 50 startups that we think have the biggest potential for growth, a significant exit, or to leverage innovation to improve the agrifood value chain in the year ahead. 📆 This edition was more challenging than previous years: startups raise money and have fewer successes to report, making it harder to evaluate where they are. Behind the scenes, and even in the absence of deals (or maybe due to that), the AgriFood innovation ecosystem is undergoing significant changes; that’s why we made numerous adjustments to the mapping, removing more than 50% of last year’s startups. 🧑‍🌾 AgTech: We have chosen to remove insect farming startups as their potential seems to be decreasing with each year. On the contrary, we now have four startups focused on bioinputs and two (Agreena and Klim) focused on carbon credits and supporting farmers on their transition towards regenerative practices. 📦 Supply Chain: by adding Brainr (which recently raised €11M), we reflect the growing wave of innovation to support efficiency gains in the food supply chain through digitisation. 🛵 Delivery: most of these startups have revenues in the multiple hundreds of millions. it confirms that this ecosystem is increasingly mature. 👨‍🍳 Foodservice: we have added a couple of players (Nory, Teby) leveraging artificial intelligence to help improve restaurant management. Foodservice is one of the areas where AI makes the most sense in the short-term in AgriFoodTech. 📱Consumer Tech: we observe the growth of players like Yazen with great interest. Focused on weight loss or supporting people with diabetes, this new generation of food coaching platforms is attracting a great number of consumers by leveraging AI and image recognition. 👨‍🔬Food Science: this category is increasingly more divided between a large number of brands (which are slightly underrepresented in this mapping) and startups at the intersection of FoodTech and Biotech. This is notably the case of players like Cradle and Basecamp research, two protein discovery/design startups. 👉 Click here to find the full list with the description of the activity of the 50 startups: https://lnkd.in/e_h3ckXh #AgTech #FoodTech #innovation

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FemWealth Issue 227 highlights 💌 In the Spotlight 💸 Co-founded and led by Bianca Cefalo, Space DOTS® helps space tech manufacturers and operators to detect, interpret, and attribute natural and human-originated threats in orbit. The London-based company announced a $1.5M Seed round led by Female Founders Fund. Startup News: - Co-founded by Haya Odeh, Replit, a San Francisco-based agentic software creation platform, secured $250M at a $3B valuation - Co-founded by Sylvie Menezo, SCINTIL Photonics, a France-based company that develops light-based components to enable AI chips to connect better and faster in data centres, raised a $58M Series B - Led by Dr Daniela Marino, CUTISS AG, a Swiss clinical-stage biotech developing personalised, scalable skin tissue therapy, raised €57.9M in Series C - Led by Kate Condliffe, Diana Health (We're Hiring!), a New York City-based network of women’s health practices, closed $55M in Series C  - Founded and led by Alyx van der Vorm, Clyx, a US social platform that helps users find community events to join, closed a $14M Series A - Co-founded by Ioana Hreninciuc, Runware, a San Francisco startup providing a unified platform that delivers the latest AI models, raised a $13M Seed round  - Co-founded by Marianne Tikkanen, Puro.earth, a Helsinki-based company that brings together suppliers of carbon net-negative technologies and companies seeking to reduce or offset their carbon footprints, raised $12.8M in Series B - Co-founded and led by Avencia Sanchez-Mejias PhD, IntegraTherapeutics, a Barcelona startup that develops next-gen gene writing tools, raised $12.6M - Founded and led by Michelle Lee, Medra , a San Francisco startup developing AI-powered robotics for labs, raised $11M in Pre-Seed and Seed - Co-founded and led by Michal Lupu, Blocks, an Israeli AI-native platform that lets organizations build intelligent work tools and AI agents through simple conversation, raised $10M in Seed  - Co-founded and led by Noel Pugh, Lōvu Health, a California-based digital maternal health platform, raised $8M in Series A - Co-founded and led by Doris Messina,Tot, an Italy-based business platform for administrative and financial management, raised €7M in Pre-Series A - Co-founded by Hanah-Marie Darley, Geordie AI, a London startup building security tools for enterprises adopting AI agents, raised a $6.5M Seed   - Co-founded by Dr Jackie Matthew, Fraiya Ultrasound, a UK startup providing AI-powered pregnancy ultrasound technology, raised £3.5M in Pre-Seed - Co-founded by Tara O'Driscoll, PhD, Dr. Sioned Fôn Jones, and Lydia Mapstone, PhD, BoobyBiome, a London company developing a device universally compatible with breast milk storage bottles that absorbs oxygen to maintain microbiome viability, raised £2.5M in Seed  - Co-founded by Tanja Danner and Professor Aasa Feragen, Prenaital, a Danish startup providing AI-powered prenatal screening tech, secured $1.57M Read more and subscribe [link in comments section]

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🚀 Excited to back Leo Acciarri, Francesco Paolo Defendi, and Mattia Zarrelli - three founders combining strong engineering, platform building and software development skills - who are tackling the big workforce shift of our times: the rise of skilled blue collar workers. They are building Gyver, an enterprise workforce infrastructure company to shape the careers of 1 in 5 skilled blue collars in EU. As a first step, Gyver built an AI-powered recruitment platform, rethinking how millions of technicians and electricians find jobs by recreating trusted word-of-mouth recommendations on WhatsApp. Workers apply with one click, while employers finally gain access to talent that is otherwise out of reach. Why now? 📊 40%+ of European employers face skilled trade shortages, blocking progress in the energy transition and reindustrialization. ⚡ Gyver has already built Italy’s largest community of electricians (21,000+ strong), who now use WhatsApp to discover jobs, apply instantly, and stay engaged through conversational AI. 🏗️ Top employers in the electrical sector are already hiring through the platform (the likes of Enpal, Schneider Electric, ...) Really fast-moving, hands-on founding team solving a real-economy problem that truly matters. Thrilled to welcome you to the portfolio, team!

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The agrifood IPO window is about to crack wide open—and most investors aren't paying attention. After three years of muted exits, 2025 has delivered high-profile public listings across tech verticals. CoreWeave, Circle, and Figma all completed successful IPOs, demonstrating strong investor appetite for formerly VC-backed companies. According to PitchBook's VC Exit Predictor, the top IPO candidates are positioned for breakouts—Apeel (97% probability), GrubMarket (97%), and Liquid Death (96%). One successful agrifood IPO could trigger a cascade of listings that transforms sector liquidity overnight. Why this matters now: The current VC funding drought stems largely from limited distributions to LPs. Without exit liquidity, available capital has dried up, delaying new fundraising. A successful public market reception would unlock the capital deployment cycle that's been frozen since 2022. LPs who position ahead of this liquidity wave will capture optimal entry valuations in quality assets. Those waiting for "proof of concept" will pay premium prices post-IPO success. Unlike previous cycles, today's agrifood leaders have proven commercial traction, established cost-reduction roadmaps, and demonstrated resilience through multiple market cycles. They're not growth-at-any-cost stories—they're profitable, scalable businesses addressing essential market needs. M&A activity has remained robust throughout the downturn, but hasn't achieved the large returns VCs need. Public markets offer the scale and liquidity for meaningful exits. Are you positioned for the agrifood liquidity renaissance, or still focused on the funding winter headlines? Which agrifood category do you think will lead the IPO recovery—agtech infrastructure, alternative proteins, or food & beverage brands? #IPO #AgriFood #ExitStrategy

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Here’s a harsh truth: fundraising today is slow, costly, and unfairly tilted towards the well-connected. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all seen it again and again.   Europe has brilliant founders with bold ideas, yet too many fail before they even get a fair chance. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not because they lack vision, but because the fundraising system is outdated. CORE changes that. Because founders get a digital co-pilot that levels the playing field: AI guidance, investor-ready decks, early visibility, and rounds live in under 72 hours.  For the cost of a dinner, every founder now has access to the tools, structure, and visibility once reserved for a few. The real cost isn’t trying, it’s waiting. This isn’t about building another tool. It’s about building Europe’s private market infrastructure, where preparation, raising, and managing capital become accessible to all. 👉 This is how we level the field: https://lnkd.in/dsYhQqnp

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