Agrifood startups received $51.7 billion

In the past year, investments in delivery startups like Flink or food producers like Impossible Food increased 85 percent, according to one study.

Venture capital investors pumped $51.7 billion into so-called agrifood startups worldwide in 2021. That's according to a study by venture capital platform Agfunder. According to the study, this would be an increase of 85 percent 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 means the business of agricultural food production.

The most significant categories by deal volume were innovative food (13.4 percent of all deals), midstream tech (12.1 percent), on-stock restaurants and retail technologies (11.9 percent), and online grocery (10.9 percent).

Sectors launched in response to the pandemic received particularly strong funding: they remained the most popular investment category, as they were in 2020. The online grocery sector saw 188 percent year-over-year growth - with four ten-figure funding rounds. The largest round in this area represented a three billion U.S. dollar investment in Chinese company Furong Xingsheng. Germany's instant delivery companies Flink and Gorillas were also named: They each raised more than US$1 billion in 2021.

Other Corona categories were also particularly successful: for example, the "Cloud Retail Infrastructure" sector saw 97.5 percent growth, according to the study: this equated to $4.8 billion, accounting for more than nine percent of all investment activity. The "innovative food" sector grew 103 percent, with more than 430 companies in this sector raising capital. Well-known companies saw the largest rounds of funding: Impossible Foods, Notco, Perfect Day, Future Meat and Nature's Fynd.