The Week in AgriFoodTech: David raises $75m, Alt Carbon nets $12m, Deere scoops up Sentera

Agrifood’s biggest round this week was a Series A for protein bar maker David, which also announced it had bought ingredients firm Epogee. Insect-based aquaculture feed producer Volare secured funds to build a new factory in Finland, and India carbon removal startup Alt Carbon scored a seed round.

Elsewhere, John Deere acquired aerial imaging startup Sentera, while Perennial and rTek launched a strategic 10-year MMRV partnership to regenerate 500,000 hectares of degraded grasslands.

Startup funding

🇺🇸 Protein bar brand David closes $75m Series A, buys ingredient supplier Nosh

🇫🇮 Volare secures $29m to build insect factory in Finland AquaFeed

🇮🇳 Alt Carbon scores $12m seed to scale carbon removal in India TechCrunch

🇨🇷 ClearLeaf closes $3.5m financing round to bring non-Toxic pathogen control to global markets Agritech Tomorrow

🇦🇷 Calice raises $2.5m seed round LatamList

🇳🇴 NoMy secures $1.4m to commercialize mycoprotein technologies using resources from beet sugar manufacturing Vegconomist

🇨🇦 Brilliant Harvest secures $500k investment from SVG Ventures iGrow News

🇧🇪 Belgium’s ResultX secures over $454k grant to simplify ESG reporting for SMEs Silicon Canals

🇺🇸 FarmQA closes oversubscribed seed round, aims to ‘supercharge’ agronomists with AI AgFunderNews

Sentera’s FieldAgent Notifications help farmers and crop advisors optimize field scouting. Image credit: Sentera

M&A, IPOs & partnerships

🇺🇸🇨🇭 Honey-without-bees startup MeliBio acquired by FoodYoung Labs: ‘Founders need to adapt, but investors should not back away’ AgFunderNews

🇺🇸 John Deere acquires Sentera to integrate aerial field scouting PR Newswire [Disclosure: AgFunderNews parent company AgFunder was an investor in Sentera.]

🇺🇸🇰🇿 Perennial and rTek launch strategic 10-year exclusive MMRV partnership to regenerate globally degraded grasslands AgNews WIre

🇯🇵🇸🇬 Denso reportedly in talks to buy Axia Vegetable Seeds for $500m Seed Today

🇯🇵 Suntory and TOWING launch pilot test on the feasibility of high‐performance biochar The Manufacturer