Meet The Well-heeled Food Disruptors

A long-time hub for the slow food movement and tech capital of the world, the Bay Area is full of startups making waves in the food innovation space. And investors are taking note. From plant-based burgers to healthy school lunches, Bay Area companies are raising capital to change the way we grow, source and consume our food.

The companies that have raked in the most funding sit squarely in the food tech space. Redwood City-based Impossible Foods has pulled in nearly $200 million for the five-year development of its plant-based burger, making it one of the top-funded food companies of all time, and San Francisco’s Hampton Creek came in second with $120 million.

Like Impossible, Hampton creates plant-based replacements for household products, the most popular of which is Just Mayo. Despite some bad press, the company recently announced that it is reaching unicorn status and will soon be valued at $1.1 billion.

Over the last two years, food tech has quickly become a rising star in the tech landscape. Funding reached $4.6 billion in 2015, almost double the $2.4 billion that poured in the year before, according to a report by AgFunder, although this year has seen a bit of a downturn. Global investment in the food tech space dropped 20 percent in the first half of 2016 from the same period last year.

Despite that, Bay Area companies are faring well. Here are the ten food startups that received the most funding from 2011 to the second quarter of 2016, according to MoneyTree Investments, a collaboration between PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.

Source: San Franciso Business Times, Tessa Love
Photo: The top 10 funded food tech companies