Food BioTech doesn’t need more belief.
It needs lower costs, clearer regulation, and real demand.

After a decade of bold promises and uneven delivery, the sector is entering a more disciplined phase.

One where success is defined less by moonshots and more by whether products can actually scale, compete on price, and fit into existing food systems.

To understand what that shift really looks like, we asked 20 Founders across the sector what gives them confidence, and what still makes progress hard.

What emerged was a shared understanding that science is largely working, and that the real constraints now sit downstream, in cost curves, regulation, infrastructure and consumer trust.

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We caught up with 20 Food BioTech founders across fermentation, biomanufacturing, food for health and nextgen ingredients to hear why Food BioTech is unavoidable for food sovereignty.

Michele Stansfield, CEO and Co-Founder of Cauldron Ferm tells us: “Food biotech tackles supply chain risk head-on. Biomanufacturing makes it possible to make critical food inputs closer to home, more secure, and ready to meet future demand. We’re seeing governments and big corporates backing bio-solutions to build more resilient supply chain strategies.”

While Tal Govrin, CEO and Co-Founder of Kokomodo emphasised its potential to “address existential threats like climate-driven crop extinction risks while preserving the original taste and nutritional profile of endangered foods.”

Karina Amado, CEO of Abydos Bioscience pointed to population growth and environmental limits, pointing out that “fermentation is helping us build reliability at scale” as she trusts in science to shift food systems away from extractive models toward sustainable ones.

For Kathleen Alexander, Co-Founder and CEO of Savor, confidence comes from its inevitability: “We’re moving downhill toward lower impact, better ethics, and higher performance. The hard part is cost and scale, but across industries the pattern is clear: breakthroughs come first, and demand drives affordability. Accelerating that demand is what pushes food innovation down the cost curve.”

Ethan Hunter, COO and Co-Founder at Immobazyme notes that “most of our FoodTech is driven by longstanding and unchanged methods. Emerging technologies, such as de novo enzyme and processing aid synthesis, are exciting developments that can transform the future of Food BioTech.”

Jasmin Hume, CEO and Founder of Shiru highlighted AI’s ability to unlock nature's vast potential. “We can now mine biological databases to find perfect, natural proteins for any food application, collapsing R&D timelines from over a decade to just months.”

At the same time, fermentation platforms are scaling faster and more efficiently. “Cheaper sensors, increased automation, and supply chains from beer and industrial enzymes are accelerating deployment,” says Paulo Ibri, CEO and Founder at Typcal. “We turn regional starch streams into consistent mycelium ingredients in ~24 hours, with strong nutrition and functionality. Demand for resilient, low-footprint protein keeps rising across LATAM and Europe today.”

The next wave of Food BioTech is about delivering measurable health outcomes by treating food as a complex biological system and designing solutions that work with the human body rather than just selling trends.

Sasikanth C, CEO and Co-Founder of DE3PBIO notes “Food is finally being treated as a biological system and engineering problem, not just as an agricultural or branding problem. With AI-speed biomanufacturing, we can design nutrition for real biological outcomes - faster, cleaner, and at scale, sustainability and cost-efficiency. That shift is irreversible.”

As the industry evolves, questions around efficacy and substantiated health claims remain critical.

Anastasia Gutkevich, CEO and Founder of Bifidice tells us: “Food BioTech is finally moving from marketing claims to proven biological function. At Bifidice, we build our products around the microbiota’s real health impact - not trends. What remains unresolved is an industry still comfortable calling food “functional” without proving biological effect. That needs to be challenged.”

Some founders pointed to a more mature industry mindset where the sector is becoming more focused on price, quality, scale, and practical commercialisation, rather than science experiments or moonshot narratives.

As Yonatan Golan, CEO and Co-Founder at Brevel tells us: “Everyone is super focused and all eyes are finally on the ball - science, tech and sustainability won't sell - only price, quality and scale. The industry has matured and the next wave of commercial results is on the way.”

As we move beyond the era of 'science for science’s sake' and enter the age of capital-efficient biomanufacturing, Carolina Aguila, CEO of NanoInGreen points out that:

“The next breakthrough isn't just a new molecule, but the ability to produce it with unit economics that the market actually validates. Success today belongs to those of us who can bridge the gap between biological potential and industrial reality."

Food biotech has clearly moved into a phase of industrial reality, as Lukas Schertel, CEO and Co-Founder of Seprify explains, “Large ingredient companies and brand owners are no longer asking whether biotech can work. They are actively evaluating where it fits into existing value chains, how it performs in real production environments, and whether it can be supplied reliably over time.”

To give an example, David Brandes, CEO and Co-Founder of Planetary shares: “The emergence of below meat price-parity protein sources are rivalling conventional meat on nutritional value, taste, and sustainability. In the sector, we're seeing repeat purchases, positive tech-driven gross margins, double-digit growth for key European markets, retailers pledging ambitious scope 3 emission reduction targets, and increased access to commercial debt instruments.” And Katelijne Bekers CEO and Co-Founder of MicroHarvest adds “some proteins produced using biotech can use up to 99% less land and water than beef while emitting 98% less CO2. Results like these demonstrate that the industry can meet the projected 50% increase in global protein demand by 2050 without overstretching the planet's resources. 

Andy Clayton, Founder and CEO at Fermtech concludes: “The industry is becoming more aware and selective of the technologies that will work short term, and those that are too future facing. The current whittling down is healthy for the industry long term.”

Where optimism is strong, so is realism.

What remains genuinely hard is scaling food biotech solutions to be economically viable.

“Cost curves, downstream processing, and access to biomanufacturing infrastructure remain major bottlenecks. Culturally, change must come from governments investing at the required scale and from consumers being open to adopting these new products,” explains Kris Blanchard, CEO and Co-Founder at Luyef Biotechnologies.

Michele noted that bio-based ingredients still struggle to compete on price, even when the technology works.

“Despite major technical gains, bio-innovation still isn't mainstream. Bio-based ingredients struggle on unit economics, slowing adoption. To really move the needle, we need serious investment to scale next-gen bioproduction technologies and regional biomanufacturing capacity that can drive costs down - plus stronger commercial pull to get bio-solutions into market.”

Kathleen echoed that scale and affordability — not scientific feasibility — are the real gating factors, “across industries the pattern is clear: breakthroughs come first, and demand drives affordability. Accelerating that demand is what pushes food innovation down the cost curve.”

Katelijne points out that “One major unresolved issue is the lengthy and complex approval process for Novel Foods, particularly in Europe, which can take several years. This has forced some startups to prioritise markets like Singapore or the US where approval timelines are often faster.”

Tal called it one of the biggest structural bottlenecks, pointing to inconsistent global standards, varying safety assessments, prolonged approval processes, and region-specific requirements (e.g., EU vs. US).

“Streamlined, harmonised frameworks and fast-track pathways are essential for commercialisation,” she tells us.

Karina noted that trust in novel food takes time, especially when food is deeply emotional and tradition-bound. And Kathleen makes a similar point, arguing that food, like medicine, needs to learn how to embrace innovation without framing it as a rejection of tradition:

“Medicine is learning to balance tradition and technology; food needs the same shift. We rely on antibiotics for infection and fermented foods for gut health without contradiction. Food culture hasn’t made that leap. Recognizing that innovation and tradition aren’t mutually exclusive is what will finally unlock real demand for progress in food.”

Ethan points to mindset shifts on recombinant technologies as the final biggest hurdle:

“There is still a culture of distrust in anything relating to 'genetically modified'. However, many of the potential solutions that can transform the future of food are driven by safe, bioidentical recombinant ingredients and processing aids.”

The biggest obstacles are structural. As Thijs Bosch, CEO of The Protein Brewery  summarises:

“Novel food ingredients compete with heavily subsidised commodities, slowing adoption if they’re not price-competitive. Regulation is still slow and capital-intensive. And we need deeper collaboration between Food Tech innovators and established companies that bring scale, R&D capability, and market access.” 

These challenges point to a deeper issue: innovation alone is not enough. Overcoming these barriers requires coordinated change across policy, capital, industry partnerships, and public perception.

“Technologies have to be built with scale, cost, and adoption in mind from the start. There needs to be clearer and more consistent regulation, more patient capital, and better collaboration across the value chain - from scientists and startups to manufacturers, brands, and retailers,” says Giacomo Bastianelli, Co-founder and CEO of Rainbow Crops. “Just as importantly, food biotech needs to communicate its value more clearly, focusing less on how novel the technology is and more on the tangible benefits for consumers, farmers, and the food system as a whole.”

For food innovators, that maturity brings a shift in expectations.

As Maury Leyland-Penno, Co-Founder of Leaft Foods , explains: “Food innovators must integrate into real food supply chains proving cost-in-use, functionality and nutrition at scale. The world has swung away from valuing climate solutions as a premium, so companies need to compete head-to-head with incumbents and win on performance.”

That means tackling multiple challenges at once.

“Changes are required in all three areas: scaling up production, addressing pricing challenges, and increasing social acceptance. However, the most immediate priorities are to boost production volumes to meet market demand and to foster public trust, making it easier for society to embrace ingredients produced through alternative methods, distinct from traditional farming or chemical food-manufacturing”, suggests Nélida Leiva Eriksson, CEO and Founder of Ironic Biotech

Yonatan highlighted that companies trying to own the entire value chain - from cell lines to infrastructure to consumer brands - are spreading themselves too thin.

“The industry is mature enough that players can focus and specialise on a single bit, and let others solve the rest.”

Andy takes the view that here is no direct reward to food companies for choosing sustainability:

“Benefits are tangential, such as deforestation legislation, or internal ESG targets, but there are no structural benefit to food companies for reducing Scope 3 emissions, such as on-pack labelling benefits. Also, the funding for innovation within the food industry is skewed. Food companies themselves take little risk, it is all outsourced to startups and their investors, so incumbency inertia remains the biggest issue.”

Commercial pull matters more than technical novelty, in today’s world where price, quality, and scale are what sell, not sustainability narratives or scientific elegance.

5 critical ideas that stood out in our discussions:

Back by popular demand, we’re teaming up once again with Nestlé Research to run the 2026 FoodTech World Cup.

This year’s edition spotlights the most promising talents in Food BioTech for the future of the Food System.

We’re on the hunt for founders building the next big breakthroughs in:

Think your startup has what it takes to impress Nestlé, leading corporates, and top investors in FoodTech?

Apply today for the chance to be shortlisted as one of the Semi-Finalists, Finalists or crowned the winner.

Join us on 23rd April for a full day dedicated to Food Sovereignty, exploring crop stability, regenerative practices, ingredient supply, metabolic health, and the connections between food, longevity, and social well-being.

Founders already confirmed to join us on stage, include

🌵Paul Mahacek, Co-Founder and CEO of AtmoCooling - transforming coastal deserts into thriving hubs of agriculture, clean energy, and climate resilience, using patented large scale evaporative cooling, seawater, and solar energy.

🚜 Tom Hubregsten, Founder and CEO of Voltrac - Creator of THOR, the next-generation automated electric tractor, designed for agriculture and frontline logistics and built for hard work and harsher conditions.

🏆 Ending the day with pitches and celebrations at the FoodTech World Cup Final.

Plus join us from 22nd April to connect with industrial investors and Founders as we unlock infrastructure and industrial capacity as a strategic power.

Alongside these conversations, we’ve compiled a living list of 350+ Food BioTech founders shaping the next phase of the industry.

Check out the full list below.

Did we miss someone? Add them here.