nestle
Freshly shareholders, including Insight Partners, sue Nestlé for ‘failing to make earnout payments’
Former investors of food delivery startup Freshly are suing Nestlé USA, which acquired the company in 2020 for up to $1.5 billion. The shareholders allege that Nestlé failed to make earnout…
Xeneta makes a splash with $80M on a $265M valuation to scale its crowdsourced sea and air freight analytics
The wheels of global commerce continue to turn, through wars, pandemics and economic downturns; and today a startup taking a new tech approach to improve the workings of one of…
When some of the world’s biggest food companies develop new products, they go to Tastewise first
The AI-driven data analytics help food brands make smarter decisions around product development, marketing and retail sales for their next healthy, sustainable and delicious products.
As brands clamour to back causes, Good-Loop raises $6M for its view-to-donate ad platform
Online advertising is generally terrible and our expectation that “information should be free” has tragically even ended up powering disinformation-filled social networks like Facebook. Many companies have tried and failed…
Starday raised $4 million in seed funding to take on “big food” incumbents.
LIVEKINDLY screams its way to the top of new plant brands with the close of a $335 million round
LIVEKINDLY Collective, the shouty parent company behind a family of plant-based food brands, has snagged cash from the global impact investing arm of $103 billion investment firm TPG to close…
Ad-supported EV charging network developer Volta raises $125 million
Volta, the developer of a network of electric vehicle charging stations that monetize using advertising, has raised $125 million in new funding in a process managed by Goldman Sachs. Volta…
Nestlé acquires healthy meal startup Freshly for up to $1.5B
Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth. Founded in 2015,…
With $18M in new funding, Braintrust says it’s creating a fairer model for freelancers
Braintrust, a network for freelance technical and design talent that launched over the summer, is announcing that it has raised $18 million in new funding. Co-founder and CEO Adam Jackson has…
VTEX raises $225M at a $1.7B valuation for e-commerce solutions aimed at retailers and brands
Retailers and consumer brands are focused more than ever in their histories on using e-commerce channels to connect with customers: the global health pandemic has disrupted much of their traditional…
With technology to perfect product pitches in digital marketplaces, Pattern raises $52 million
Pattern, a Lehi, Utah-based reseller that offers large and small brands a way to optimize their sales on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Google Shopping, has raised $52 million…
TradeDepot adds $10 million to add financial services to its supply chain services for African SMBs
Nigeria’s e-commerce startup TradeDepot, which connects international brands to small businesses in Africa, has raised $10 million in a new round of funding to expand its business into financial services…
Microsoft and SAS announce deep technology partnership
Microsoft and SAS, the privately held enterprise data management and analytics company (and not the airline), today announced a far-reaching partnership that will see Microsoft’s Azure become SAS’s preferred cloud,…
OTTO Motors raises $29M to fill factories with autonomous delivery robots
When Clearpath Robotics CEO and co-founder Matthew Rendall looks at the “miles” of roads inside industrial factories, he sees them filled with autonomous vehicles. And in the past five years,…
Replacing plastic with plant pulp for sustainable packaging attracts a billionaire backer
In a small suburb of Melbourne, two entrepreneurs are developing a technology that could mean big changes for the packaging industry. Stuart Gordon and Mark Appleford are the co-founders of…
Alpha Foods raises $28 million for its vegetarian prepared foods
Alpha Foods, the vegetarian prepared food manufacturer, has raised $28 million in financing for its portfolio of vegetarian burritos, tamales, nuggets, pizzas, burgers, patties and sausages. The Glendale, Calif.-based company…
Spatial raises $14M more for a holographic 3D workspace app, a VR/AR version of Zoom or Hangouts
The worlds of virtual and augmented reality have yet to land on the applications and hardware to truly spark mass-market, consumer interest in the space, but in the meantime, a…
What’s beyond Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods in the future of food?
The age of alternative meats is upon us. Beyond Meat is a $5 billion public company selling burgers in Canadian McDonald’s and American Carl’s Jr., breakfast sausages in Dunkin, and…
Latin America roundup: Neobanks raise $205M+; Softbank backs VTEX
Argentina’s Ualá became the most recent Latin American fintech to receive a growth-stage funding ($150 million) from Asian investors, Tencent and Softbank. This marks Tencent’s second round of investment in Ualá,…
Startup aims to make filtered water an app-driven subscription service in the home
With so many scandals around the quality of tap water these days, especially in the U.S., many people are turning to bottled water to drink. But this requires single-use plastics…
McDonald’s starts selling its Beyond Meat-based “P.L.T.” sandwich in Canada
McDonald’s first foray into the plant-based protein patty market in North America is launching today in Canada. The company’s “P.L.T.” (plant, lettuce, and tomato) sandwich, which uses patties from Beyond…
Food delivery startup Dahmakan eats up $5M for expansion in Southeast Asia
It’s harvest season for Southeast Asia’s full-stack food delivery startups. Following on from Singapore’s Grain raising $10 million, so Malaysia-based Dahmakan today announced a $5 million financing round of its…
Kargo is disrupting logistics in Myanmar, one of the world’s most challenging countries
Founders in Seattle recently bemoaned a lack of capital and support when compared to Silicon Valley — what about those building startups in more remote markets? Kargo, a company that…
After announcing that they were launching a managed blockchain service late last year, Amazon Web Services is now opening that service for general availability. It was only about five months…
Blueland launches with a suite of eco-friendly cleaning supplies designed to reduce plastic waste
Sarah Paiji had the idea to launch the eco-friendly refillable cleaning supply retailer Blueland after hearing about the abundance of microplastics in the water she was using to dilute her…
Facebook says that Workplace now has 2M paying users
With Slack gearing up to go public and now seeing daily active users of 10 million with 85,000 organizations using it to help employees communicate with each other, Facebook today…
Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise platform, adds another major customer, Nestlé
While Facebook continues to repair its image with consumers disenchanted with the social network’s role in disseminating misleading or false information and mishandling their personal data, it’s ironically been finding…
Google created a fake pizza brand to test out creative strategies for YouTube ads
Google’s Unskippable Labs team has been testing ad effectiveness in a compelling new way: It created a fake pizza brand called Doctor Fork, used stock footage to create 33 ads…
Featured Article
To win back consumers, big brands should invest in R&D and innovation
The world of consumer goods is changing. Consumer tastes are becoming more and more fragmented and big incumbents continue to lose market share to upstart brands. It’s often difficult for these incumbents to figure out how to respond. CPG is full of smart people but many of the biggest brands have seen their sales stagnate…
Investing in tech for hospitality and food, Almanac Investments raises $30 million
David Barber, the storied owner of the Blue Hill restaurant, farm, and hospitality consulting mecca (a favorite of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama), has long been an…
