Agrifood startups received $51.7 billion

Last year, investments in delivery start-ups such as Flink or food producers such as Impossible Food increased by 85%, according to a study.

Venture capital investors pumped 51.7 billion US dollars into agrifood start-ups worldwide in 2021. This is according to a study by the venture capital platform Agfunder. This would be an increase of 85% compared to the previous year. According to the study, 4,570 investors made 3,155 investments in the business sector. Agrifood start-ups are located in the field of agricultural and food technology. The term "agrifood" refers to the business of agricultural food production.

The most significant categories by transaction volume were "innovative food" (13.4 percent of all deals), "midstream tech" (12.1 percent), "in-store restaurants" and retail technologies (11.9 percent) as well as online food retail (10.9 percent).

Sectors that were launched in response to the pandemic received particularly large amounts of money: as in 2020, they remained the most popular investment category. The online grocery sector achieved growth of 188% compared to the previous year - with four ten-figure financing rounds. The largest round in this area was a three billion US dollar investment in the Chinese company Furong Xingsheng. Germany's instant delivery companies Flink and Gorillas were also mentioned by name: They each raised more than one billion US dollars in 2021.

Other coronavirus categories were also particularly successful: according to the study, the "Cloud retail infrastructure" sector, for example, recorded growth of 97.5 percent: this equated to 4.8 billion dollars, which accounted for more than nine percent of all investment activity. The "innovative food" sector grew by 103 percent: more than 430 companies in this sector raised capital. Well-known companies were able to record the largest financing rounds: Impossible Foods, Notco, Perfect Day, Future Meat and Nature's Fynd.