The future of food is being built faster, and more technically, than ever before.

We asked food-focused investors a simple question: which European startups are you most excited about right now?

From AI-designed ingredients and fermentation at scale to carbon-negative food production and entirely new supply chains, their picks reveal where the smartest capital in food is paying attention.

Across the board, one theme is clear: the next wave of food innovation is deeply technical, commercially ambitious, and closer to market than many think.

We reveal the startups they’re watching, and why.

What: Amass is a scientific intelligence platform for R&D and business development teams in biotech and pharma.

Why they were nominated: “Their technology is a cool enabler that will increase speed of product development in food.”

What: Multifunctional Ingredients setting a new standard for creating better food—simpler, smarter, and beyond one-to-one subs

Why they were nominated: “They are building a new category of multi-functional ingredients.”

What: Building a bold brew based on patent pending fermentation and roasting technology. They leverage local pulses to create the "Koppie Bean". A bean you can swap for your coffee bean, and use it whichever way you like.

Why they were nominated: “They have a good approach to working with the coffee industry to mitigate supply chain and bring sustainability.”

What: Tackling the supply chain problem in the food industry.

Why they were nominated: “Motivation: built its company on 100+ customer interviews - an inspiration to many food tech companies.”

What: Integrating scale-down experiments with AI-based modeling to optimise how industry-relevant microbes grow ("biomass fermentation") and produce ("precision fermentation").

Why they were nominated: “Differential Bio tackles one of the biggest hidden bottlenecks in biotech and food tech: scaling biology from lab to industry. It is like digital twins for fermentation, making the process predictable, scalable and cost-effective with a “AI-native” approach.”

What: AI-powered peptides discovery company pioneering the next generation of science-backed ingredients for functional foods and supplements.

Why they were nominated: “Lembas is at the forefront of the $500B booming weight management & GLP-1 space with their cutting-edge computational AI and peptide design technology. Lembas is the only company offering the food & supplement industry, clinical validated food-grade peptide ingredients that naturally trigger the release of GLP-1.”

What: Supporting the natural removal process of forever chemicals from the body

Why they were nominated: “Combiotics is developing probiotic supplements designed to help reduce PFAS levels (“forever chemicals”) in the human body. PFAS are one of the biggest global health issues found in water, food packaging etc. are detectable in ~99% of people and persistent in the human body for decades.”

What: Arsenale is building an integrated hardware and software platform that brings industrial conditions into bioprocess development to enable customers to biomanufacture ingredients profitably.

Why they were nominated: “Arsenale is working to make industrial biomanufacturing economically viable by breaking the industry’s reliance on outdated scale‑up assumptions and replacing them with data‑rich, industrial‑native systems that cut cost and time.”

What: Pacifico produces mycelium‑based meat alternatives, starting with chicken, that are designed for B2B foodservice, manufacturing, and private‑label applications.

Why they were nominated: “Pacifico’s capital‑light production model makes use of excess capacity and gives them a credible path to competing with chicken on price. Plus, the products are delicious.”

What: Enduro boosts host cell productivity through a genetic modification that prevents fermentation performance from degrading at industrial scale.

Why they were nominated: “Enduro's technology drops directly into existing strains and processes and has already delivered meaningful yield gains with commercial partners.”

What: Using the power of enzymes to transform how our bodies use food, by adding micro quantities of naturally-derived enzymes to foods to improve nutritional outcomes.

Why they were nominated: “Zya has developed an enzyme called Convero designed to convert up to 30% of sugar into prebiotic dietary fiber inside the human digestive system. This can help reduce issues related to overconsumption of sugar.”

What: Developing scalable fermentation platform to create resilient, future-ready solutions for global supply chains – with exceptional taste, high cost efficiency & availability.

Why they were nominated: “Their cocoa-free chocolate alternatives from fermented ingredients can help reduce reliance of cocoa, which is under climate pressure.”

What: Omni has created delicious, healthier and more sustainable plant-based dog food.

Why they were nominated: “Vet-founded Omni produces science-backed, plant-based dog food and supplements aimed at improving canine health (e.g. obesity and allergies) and reducing environmental impact.”

What: Ironic is building a differentiated iron ingredient platform based on a true scientific discovery: a plant-derived heme-like protein with high bioavailability and no typical side effects.  Pre-clinical studies on animals indicated good iron absorption and no GI side-effects.

Why they were nominated: “Their ingredient works in a range of formats: capsules, tablets, sachets, liquid drops, prenatal and sport nutrition blends. It also functions in range of food matrixes adding bioavailable iron without compromising the taste. The key unlock is economics. Only very small inclusion rates are needed, making precision fermentation viable at ingredient scale. They enter via premium health and specialized nutrition, with strong upside into global food.”

What: Enifer is scaling a proven, decades-old fermentation process into a modern, industrial protein platform.

Why they were nominated: “Their PEKILO® mycoprotein is already validated, and the company is now moving through regulatory and toward large-scale production. What stands out is the combination of technical de-risking and industrial readiness with clear pathways into global ingredient markets. C-round later this year.”

What: Cambiotics is tackling one of the largest unaddressed health externalities: PFAS (“forever chemicals”), which are present in almost everyone and currently have no scalable way of being removed from the human body .

Why they were nominated: “Their approach is based on proprietary bacterial strains that bind PFAS in the gut and enable excretion, with strong early data and IP from Cambridge. What makes this interesting is the combination of deep science and a very pragmatic go-to-market. Cambiotics enters via a premium DTC supplement (46&), targeting high-exposure groups like firefighters first.”

What: Building the AI layer for below ground intelligence - utilising biogeochemistry, metabolic modeling and generative genomic AI.

Why they were nominated: “Elaniti is truly pushing the boundaries of agriculture intelligence. By grounding Generative AI in first-principles physics, their platform simulates the invisible interaction effects of soil metabolism at scale. This allows predicting performance before practice, optimising on-farm management and accelerating the development of safe, effective new inputs.”

What: Creating tailor-made plant proteins for a better fit in food applications, offering a license model for producing plant proteins through economic and ecological extrusion.

Why they were nominated: “A startup with a disruptive process in plant-based protein! It enables eliminating a production step so makes the resulting ingredients both tastier, cheaper and less processed. The initial plant-based hype may be over, but it is still a growing category, especially when enabled by innovations such as these.”

What: Helping food and beverage companies accelerate the transition to regenerative agriculture, by starting with scalable, trusted, and data-driven biochar infrastructure.

Why they were nominated: “Biochar is a strong tool for carbon reduction but also for sequestring carbon, making it a truly regenerative business. Beyond solid HW and SW, Cotierra has proven to have real execution skills, needed in value chains such as coffee and other similar crops, enabling them to move into a solid business supported by major players.”

What: Eliminating off-flavors in plant proteins, by enabling plant-based products that consumers actually choose for taste.

Why they were nominated: “They figured out how to make pea protein powder taste completely invisible, which would be a significant unlock for better tasting plant-based products.”

What: The Cultivated Meat B2B Marketplace – connecting producers, researchers, and start-ups with the critical materials, equipment, and services they need to scale.

Why they were nominated: “Cellbase is bringing a badly needed commercialization engine to cultivated meat with the first marketplace for the cellular agriculture supply chain.”

What: Hoxton Farms builds modular clusters of bioreactors to grow high-margin products from stem cells for food and pharma.

Why they were nominated: “They have strong innovation around biomanufacturing at scale.”

What: Autonomous harvesting robots for resilient greenhouse operations. Designed for growers who need certainty today and at scale.

Why they were nominated: “They have extremely fast execution solving a huge problem leveraging robotics and AI.”

What: Combine hospitality and technology to make freshly cooked food a reliable part of daily operations.

Why they were nominated: “A European start-up with US Army contracts. Solving the availability of healthy and fresh food at scale can have a massive impact. Scaling a robotics company in Europe.”

What: Next-generation recovery technologies for advanced industries.

Why they were nominated: “They have an elegant, semplicistic (and cost-effective) approach to solve a complex problem: high value compound extraction from fermentation processes, bypassing current expensive capex + opex.”

What: Reinventing how field operations capture and use data starting with agriculture.

Why they were nominated: “The AI companion that agriculture consultants were longing for: a voice-to-text AI tool that saves up hours of manual tasks to operators that go out in the field. Impressive user retention rate + superior product features.”

What: Aardaia is pioneering a new era of domestication to unlock the immense, untapped biodiversity of the plant kingdom.

Why they were nominated: “A team on a mission: helping food security by domesticating a forgotten crop whose nutritional potential could overcome well-known crops. A classical example of what venture capital is about: a long term play that could disrupt the current agri-food value chain.”

What: BugBiome develops biological alternatives to chemical insecticides by linking insect behaviour to microbial function.

Why they were nominated: “With £1M invested, they built a patented discovery platform, advanced a lead aphid product to field trials, and secured paying customers.”

What: Elaniti uses generative AI to simulate real soil responses before costly physical trials.

Why they were nominated: “Their platform keeps learning when it encounters new microbes, unlike other AI models. With a complementary team and strong traction, they accelerate sustainable agriculture innovation.”

What: Amatera integrates plant cell biology, robotics and AI to evaluate plants at cellular level, identifying resilient varieties.

Why they were nominated: “By automating labor-intensive processes, Amatera accelerates breeding technologies. They're a complementary team with a strong scientific approach to move from lab to field.”

Note, startups marked (*) have ties or are a portfolio with the named investor