Source: CloudKitchens

Every week we track the business, tech and investment trends in CPG, retail, restaurants, agriculture, cooking and health, so you don’t have to. Here are some of this week’s top headlines.

Check out our weekly round-up of last week’s top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

1. Saudis Pour $400M Into Travis Kalanick’s Ghost Kitchen Startup – The Spoon

Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth-fund invested $400 million in CloudKitchens. The fund’s agreement was completed in January and could value CloudKitchens at $5 billion.

2. McDonald’s Fires C.E.O. Steve Easterbrook After Relationship With Employee – The New York Times

Mr. Easterbrook will be replaced by Chris Kempczinski, who most recently served as president of McDonald’s USA. Mr. Easterbrook had been widely credited with turning around McDonald’s after it posted one of its worst financial performances in years, in 2015.

3. Paine Schwartz is Eyeing Plant-Based Revolution With New $1.5bn PE Fund – AgFunder

The fund aims to drive a sustainable food chain and will be proactive about environmental, social and governance criteria.

4. Bowery Raises $50M More For Indoor, Pesticide-Free Farms – Crunchbase News

Indoor farming startup Bowery raised an additional $50M in an extension of its Series B round led by Temasek and Henry Kravis. The company also announced a new indoor farm in Baltimore that will be 3.5 times larger than its last facility.

5. Uber Eats is Building Out an Ad Business – Restaurant Dive

Food delivery service Uber Eats is looking to sell advertising to restaurants and boost orders.

6. Cannabis Brand 1906 Closes $18M Funding Round, Launches Rapid Onset Cannabis Tablets – Benzinga

Navy Capital led the round. The company plans to use the funds to support its launch in Illinois, Michigan and Massachusetts. Its Drops tablets combine plant-based medicine and medicinal cannabis.

7. Microsoft Azure Gets Into Agtech with the Preview of FarmBeats – TechCrunch

FarmBeats is Microsoft’s project that combines IoT sensors, data analysis and machine learning. It aims to augment farmers’ knowledge and intuition about their own farm with data and data-driven insights.

8. Embattled WeWork Opens San Francisco Co-Working Space for Food Startups – SF Chronicle

Just days after an investor bailed out WeWork, the struggling New York company is opening a new space in San Francisco, its second WeWork Food Labs.

9. Green Rabbit Raises $31M to Set Standard for Grocery, Perishable Food Fulfillment – Refrigerated Frozen Food

Green Rabbit automates the entire distribution, fulfillment and delivery process. Investment came from Guidepost Growth Equity to add talent to the startup’s workforce and further develop its supply chain automation capabilities.

10. Barcelona-Based 0n-Demand Delivery App Glovo Launches in Poland, Acquires Pizza Portal for €35M – EU Startups

Barcelona-based Glovo, one of the world’s fastest-growing on-demand delivery players, has acquired Poland’s largest food delivery platform, Pizza Portal.

11. Impossible Foods Is Creating Plant-Based Pork as It Eyes China – Bloomberg

The company reportedly has a good prototype and is working on commercialization.

12. Consumers Say They Want More Sustainable Products. Now They Have the Receipts to Prove It – Fortune

Research from New York University’s Center for Sustainable Business finds 50% sales growth among sustainable CPG products between 2013 and 2018.

13. Mooala Closes $8.3M Series A Round – BevNet

Plant-based dairy maker Mooala raised $8.3 million in a Series A financing round led by Sweat Equities. The round brings the three-year-old brand’s total funding to more than $13 million.

14. 2018 U.S. Food & Beverage Startup Investment Report

Over $1.45B was invested across 247 deals in 2018, according to the research in our second annual investment report produced in partnership with Ryan Willams.  Check out the report for a deep dive into the investor and investment trends. We also share a complete list of deals and acquisitions.

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