Farmigo Shuts Down, Can Tech Money Scale Real Food? $155M Pumped Into Food Tech + More

Every week we track all the business, tech and investment trends in agriculture, CPG, retail, restaurants, cooking and health, so you don’t have to. We took off last week, so today we have a lot of exciting headlines to share.

In startup shut down news, farm-t0-table grocery delivery darling Farmigo, which had raised $26M to date, announced that it will be halting operations as of this week. On the funding front: food tech startups pulled in $155M globally during the month of May, and Civil Eats’ Naomi Starkman explores what it will take for tech investors to help scale sustainable food and farming. Other headlines include Danone’s $10B acquisition of WhiteWave, UK-based delivery startup Just Eat piloting self-driving delivery robots and much more. Check out our weekly round-up of last weeks top food startup, tech and innovation news below or peruse the full newsletter here.

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1. Food + Tech Connect Food Tech Media Startup Funding, M&A and Partnerships

May saw $155M in food tech funding globally. Close to 60% of capital went to U.S. companies, and e-commerce and delivery were the dominant sectors.

2. Digested: Can Tech Money Help Real Food Scale Up? – Civil Eats

Naomi Starkman explores what it would take for investing in sustainable food and ag to become as hot as apps and drones, featuring our founder Danielle Gould.

3. Danone Boosts U.S. Business With $10 Billion WhiteWave Deal – Wall Street Journal

The deal, Danone’s largest in a decade, gives it a slice of the fast-growing organic market, as it eats up WhiteWave brands including Horizon Organic milk, Wallaby Organic yogurt and Earthbound Farm packaged salad.

4. Millennial Interests Continue To Drive $5.7B Food Startup Investment Industry – FoodDive

Millennial interests include “real” food with natural and organic ingredients, convenient packaging and artisanal products. The millennial market is expected to drive 75% of growth for food and beverage over the next decade.

5. UK: Self-Driving Robots Will Start Delivering Food For Just Eat And Others – Forbes

The European food delivery app will use Starship Technologie’s self-driving robots to deliver food to customers’ doors in London. It is the first food delivery startup to do so.

6. This Robot-Powered Burger Joint Could Put Fast Food Workers Out Of A Job – Tech Insider

Opening soon in San Francisco, Momentum Machine can crank out 400 hamburgers in an hour thanks to its burger making robot that preps ingredients and assembles burgers completely without human assistance.

7. Brooklyn Farm-to-Table Tech Startup Farmigo Shutting Down – DNA Info

The local grocery delivery startup that aimed to replace supermarkets will halt operations as of July 14. Farmigo had raised $26M in funding and was serving 15k families. It could not be reached for comment on the shut down.

8. UK: Amazon Laughs In The Face of Brexit, Creates 1,000 More British Jobs – The Memo

While the pound crumbles, Amazon says sales are in line with expectations. The retail giant just hired 1k more employees and expanded its Prime Now one-hour delivery service to over a third of the UK.

9. Will This Technology Make Fish Farming More Sustainable? – Civil Eats

A methane-eating bacteria could create the basis for new fish feed that doesn’t rely on soy or corn.

10. The Next Phase For Agriculture Technology – Forbes

AgFunder co-founder Rob Leclerc explores how companies tackling everything from sensors and drones to farm inputs and gene editing are rapidly transforming the world’s oldest industry.

11. New Study Shows Chronic Fatigue Syndrome May Have to Do with Gut Microbes – Washington Post

The study found that people with CFS had less diversity in gut bacteria that the healthy subjects, suggesting that diet and probiotics may be a way to help treat the disease.